America Online's New Release Holds On Hard
(discussion of recent AOL presentation from TheStreet.com)
"As America Online (AOL:NYSE) goes, so goes the industry," said Banc of America Internet analyst Alan Braverman. To which I will add, where AOL goes, there goes the financial industry.
Forget standing room only. The Tuesday afternoon presentation by America Online was on a whole other level. The 300 seats in the largest presentation room at the Ritz-Carlton were filled; the crowd stood five-deep in back and lined the walls. I'm told there was a knot of people crowded around televisions in an overflow room on the second floor.
Chief Financial Officer Mike Kelly gave an extremely bullish presentation, saying in essence that AOL's domination of the Internet market has only just begun. "Some people say the growth is slowing, but we don't see that," said Kelly. "Across all of our businesses, the momentum is real strong. Even though we've seen incredible growth, the growth of the Internet is going to accelerate over the next couple of years -- accelerate."
Kelly also debuted a screen shot of the new AOL 5.0. Notable among its features was the "You've Got Pictures" tool, which was designed with Eastman Kodak (EK:NYSE) and will soon be the name of a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Just kidding. AOL hopes to make the online picture business a focal point of its "sticky" strategy, designed to keep subscribers online longer. "This is huge," said Kelly. "Once a customer spends the time to organize and store pictures online, they won't leave." |
