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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla Game Investing in the eWorld

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To: Teflon who wrote (71)	9/3/1999 11:44:00 PM
From: Brian K Crawford	Read Replies (3) of 1817

Hi Teflon, Nice new spinoff thread :-) Re AOL. Thus far the discussion has been primarily about the "classic AOL" service. My sense is that AOL is far beyond that in scope and ambition. Permit me some rambling thoughts???: * AOL's ICQ has 40 million users on a proprietary, free system with unique messaging features (the youth market?) www.icq.com * AOL Instant Messenger has 20+ million web users (the sophisticated ISP user market, who want to do buddy lists, too?) * AOL's Classic service has 18 million Instant Messenger users. * Netscape Netcenter has significant potential as a business oriented portal. * AOL.com is a direct Yahoo model competitor * Compuserve is now positioned as the domestic AOL brand for the price concious user (remember when C-serve was where the sophisticated users were?) * AOL is in rollout as a "free ISP" in UK and Europe using the Netscape brand. * Digital Cities is their local web site initiative in partnership with Tribune Company. * AOL is now offering advertising deals and e-commerce exclusives across all of these brands. See the multiple brand strategy? Look at all the instant messaging users...AIM, ICQ, and classic AOL. This is a communications platform that is dominated by AOL today. No wonder Microsoft is rattling their sabers and demanding that AOL open up the system... And incubators? AOL has an incubator program. It doesn't have the scope of a CMGI or SFE, but it is a hidden value and strategic asset. Maybe someone here has the details and can flesh out the AOL investment portfolio, or I can add it in another post. Over a billion in cash plus their stock for currency, and AOL has yet to start rolling up local or regional ISP's. They can. Will they? They wouldn't need to change the name or user's interface in order to get at the user base and gain from scale economies. AOL acquired ICQ and left it basically unchanged. It continues to have word-of-mouth organic growth at a sizzling pace. And broadband strategy...the allegation that AOL has no strategy gets to me a bit. AOL HAS a broadband strategy! They don't own the copper or coax, but they most definitely have a strategy... xDSL service marketed and installed through every RBOC in the country (who are AOL's natural marketing partners against the common enemy: AT&T/AtHome). Watch the xDSL deals with AOL bundled come out in the next few months. The RBOC's know that the AOL name has drawing power, and they know THIS IS THE TIME TO GRAB THE HIGH SPEED USER, BECAUSE A USER GAINED NOW IS A USER FOR LIFE (Sound familiar? This is what we learned from Moore about the appropriate stategy in a tornado market) The RBOC's will be moving fast because that last mile is theirs and they want to keep it that way. "Free" AOL with your xDSL service may be the pitch that sells. I see lots of momentum and traction for Mr Case and Mr Pittman. Yes I am long :-) Good luck with the thread. Looks like a sure winner to me! Brian

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