Have you read The Electronic Investor page "Don't Write Off America Online" in Barron's this week? It almost sounded like a paid commercial for AOL. But my experience mirrors yours; I sent the following e.mail to Barron's:
Subject: Write Off America Online
To Kathy Yakal,
I was in the process of abandoning aol when they announced their flat
price policy. This made an easy decision only a little more difficult.
The key is to determine if the additional content and services provided by aol is worth putting up with the "clunky Internet browser" (quote from Motley Fool) and the poor quality of the Internet access.
I have been using an ISP these last 45 days, and its been a revelation after suffering through aol. The availabiliy of the local access number, the speed of the locally based server, and joy of the Navigator 3.0 browser compared with aol 3.0, demonstrated that if I wanted primarily Internet access, I should leave aol. My Infi.net access is preferrable at the same $19.95 per month flat fee. And although aol has gotten rid of the "dreaded blue bar" displayed every time you sit there waiting for the art work to download, it seems I still sit there watching artwork download.
The only question is whether the other features of aol are worth putting up with the clunky Internet connection. Since investment management is one of the primary reasons I use these online services, then I looked forward to your column giving me a reason to stay with aol.
The first thing you mention in aol's favor is the investor message
boards, which you claim will be "even more well-attended" under flat
pricing. Compare the aol boards with the boards on the Internet at the Silicon Investor site. The number of postings at SI are much higher, and although both have a poor signal to noise ratio, the SI boards seem to have more experts participate. For example, the Intel board is followed by Intel's manager for investor relations. This is not surprising because there are over 200 million Internet users compared with 7 million aol users. Conclusion; you waste more time at the aol boards than the SI boards.
Next you mention the Motley Fools. But you fail to mention that most of the Motley Fool information is also available directly on the net at the fool.com site. The only thing you miss is some message boards on fool investments, but most of these companies are covered at the SI site.
As you noted there is terrific selection of online trading available on the net, so no advantage to aol here.
Finally, aol does provide online access to some publications; I haven't fully evaluated the value of these services. But the fast majority of the company specific news is available on the net. I do admit the value added analyses in these publications are very worthwhile, but I don't use it much, preferring to read the newspapers and magazines directly. The really relevant info shows up on the net anyway. For example, the article "Panic No More" on high tech investments in this weeks Barron's, had relevant portions posted at sites all over the net this weekend, long before Barrons showed up in subsciber mailboxes here in the Silicon Valley on Monday afternoon. I suspect in the future that content providers will want to reach the largest audience with material (and advertising), and not be constricted through gatekeepers.
In conclusion, I can't see the aol content worth the lousy Internet
connection. So I will leave aol. And I am glad I will not be one of 7
million aol subscibers who hit the net together on December 1st with
unlimited connection time. Gaarrgh !!! The mere thought makes my head ache.
Paul |
