Just a couple of quick follow-up notes:
Michael: I am far from convinced that AOL will ever make money or be a good long term investment. I think they are selling a product for less than it costs to produce it, and it remains to be seen whether ad revenues can make up the difference. I'm long, though, for the reasons I stated earlier, and because enough people are being sold on the story at the moment to keep the stock going up.
Jim: What you say in your note is my exact point. YOU hook your people up to a local ISP; YOU set up their email; YOU install Netscape, put on Pointcast, hook them to Yahoo and config it. I do that for people, too. And I charge them for it. Most of my customers hear that and say, "I don't need all that," or, "That sounds way too complicated for me," or, "Well, I think I'll try this free disk first." And they sign up with AOL.
The one thing on here I disagree most strongly with is the idea that AOL has a phantom subscriber base. I see so many real AOL customers that pay month after month that that doesn't wash with me.
Oh, and by the way. I've had a good number of cases where I've walked into someone's house and said, "You know, if what you're really online for is to use the internet, you should get a direct connect to an ISP." And the customer says, "I would, but my kids would kill me." I suggest that they can piggyback AOL on their TCP connection and they tell me that they don't want to spend more than the $20/month. (I have hooked up a number of customers with the home grown, cheap ISP's in the past. The ISP always end up getting overloaded, and I get flooded with phone calls. So I don't do that any more.) Anyway, the point is that the kids have a huge influence in most of these households, and the kids want AOL so they can talk to their friends. And kids don't want to hear anything about other ways to do this.
Anyway, this was supposed to be a quick note! BTW, Jim, I wish I had the luxury of picking and choosing MY customers!
Regards,
Tom |
