I haven't seen an ad for Prodigy, but I doubt they're much of a long-term threat to AOL. Prodigy has been trying without much luck to make a dent in AOL's popularity for 8 years. They couldn't do it when they offered a fully proprietary service that mirrored the offerings of AOL. They'll take away only a few users from AOL with this new pure-internet version.
This new version of Prodigy doesn't have the proprietary content which some folks seem to like on AOL, but that means they can't force their users to see ads, and therefore will be getting all their money from subscriptions.
It looks to be a pure ISP. For some reason, they force folks to download special software for their service but I don't know what that gives them except maybe configuration shortcuts. Since this service is pure internet, anyone with an ISP can see everything a Prodigy user can see (unless, maybe, they have secure servers that pump out a special page when a Prodigy IP address is detected, but that doesn't seem to be happening). When I log onto www.prodigy.net, I see a branded Prodigy home page, which looks only a bit different from the www.excite.com page. In fact, the prodigy page picks up my excite user ID and gives me the customized page I have setup for excite, with stock picks, weather, and all.
|
