AOL Needs Tough Love
By Tish Williams
Editor, Upside Today
AOL is a bad seed.
It's been unruly in the past. Living too fast, throwing away its diskettes wantonly. Going on obsessive user binges, only later to pass out in a heap when its immature networks couldn't handle the load. Tweaking its numbers to ease financial pain, soaring in the bliss of semiconscious spreadsheet-jockeying amphetamines.
Seducing nubile young Net users with big promises and sending them home with little more than a grope-'n-feel in a chat room to show for it.
You naughty, naughty boy.
But it's straightened up lately. It's flying right. No more churn. Better service. Better response to service outages. And its parole officers, the public markets, have given it a firm handshake and a slap on the back.
AOL's stock is soaring. It's becoming almost respectable. It's become one of the Internet miracles, it's rocky past hardly even factoring into its current reputation and its shining hopes for the future.
Until last week that is, when it got caught stealing money out of the cash register at its part-time job at McDonald's.
AOL decided to spread the $380 million in cash from its network sales to WorldCom over 20 quarters. Twenty quarters? Explain yourself, young man! Like disgruntled parents, we stand on the porch in our terrycloth robes, arms folded, lips clenched to hold back our snarling rage.
How could AOL do this to us! After all the trust we've given it? The cash we've invested. The careful attention we've paid to giving it positive feedback. There've been no groundings, no scoldings, no unnecessary discipline in the last six months.
Even worse, it got caught red-handed in the exact same week it was supposed to get promoted to night manager in charge of the deep-fat fryer and the drive-thru window. Last week NYSE members voted at their annual meeting on AOL CEO Steve Case's nomination to the board of the Big Board.
The votes came down in Case's favor. The NYSE needs tech stocks, especially the Internet hotshots. Case is on the East Coast. The event flew by in a PR second, the snapping of a picture for the wall and a parking spot in the lot, right?
But is our problem child going to be able to fill these shoes and perform up to expectations? Or is AOL going to show up smoking in the men's room, setting off the fire alarm? Stealing hub caps on Wall Street? Spray-painting its name all over the staid institutions?
Do we need to sign up for one of those horror-story tough love camps where they'll round up AOL management in the middle of the night, fly them to some remote island and make them work hard labor until their wills are broken? Or will this second accounting flub scare AOL straight?
And who's gonna answer the phone when the next emergency call comes in at 2 a.m.?
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>Steve Case elected to NYSE
board<
That's called an award for jumping the Nasdaq ship and making big bucks for the big board.
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The votes came down in Case's favor. The NYSE needs tech stocks, especially the Internet hotshots. Case is on the East Coast. The event flew by in a PR second, the snapping of a picture for the wall and a parking spot in the lot, right? |
