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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla Game Investing in the eWorld -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Curbstone who wrote (58)	9/3/1999 4:19:00 PM
From: Ritch	Respond to of 1817

AOL is a nursery for clueless beginners to the online world. The reason they don't switch is because they don't know how. This is not entirely true. I have a very technical background and have had AOL for years. I also have another ISP. There are a few reasons that I keep AOL. 1) My wife gets involved in some the the chats on AOL and has made many friends there that she does not want to lose. AOL fosters a "community" type environment. 2) My son would rebel if I got rid of AOL because all of his friends are on it! (You would not believe how many kids practically live on AOL). 3) There is a lot of content in AOL that can be found elsewhere, but it is all in one place on AOL. This means that it saves time and effort. I believe that the main reasons people stay on AOL are 1 & 2 along with a few non-techie types that just find it easier. I personally do not use AOL very often. Mainly when my ISP is down for some reason. But I for one do not see leaving AOL for the forseeable future. Ritch

To: Curbstone who wrote (58)	9/3/1999 6:07:00 PM
From: StockHawk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1817

>NO REFUNDS or CREDITS will be given. As a general rule, American Online users are not computer savvy or it seems, capable of the level of technical sophistication necessary to operate a computer outside of an AOL environment.< Mike, So that's from your ISP. Are they a public company? Can you name them? With customer service like that they might make a good short sale candidate. <g> Seriously, I usually connect to the Internet with a cable modem but I also have AOL loaded on all my PCs. It is epecially useful on a laptop - I've traveled throughout the US and Canada, and AOL is usually just a local call away. StockHawk

To: Curbstone who wrote (58)	9/5/1999 3:22:00 AM
From: Bruce Brown	Respond to of 1817

>AOL is a nursery for clueless beginners to the online world. The reason they don't switch is because they don't know how. Most of them cannot even view a picture sent as an email attachment. In the context of the online nursery AOL is an enabling process that will continue to propagate new seedlings until hardware makes online access as simple at turning on your TV set and/or speaking to the box. Clueless beginners? In that frame of mind I guess we could say that People Magazine is a periodical for clueless beginning readers who wouldn't know how to tackle the pages of a real book or periodical with more 'technical' articles without pictures. Or Apple is a computer OS/hardware combination for clueless users who obviously are just beginners and only require a toy rather than an obvious more technical 'real' computer. Or a rotary telephone is for clueless beginning telephone users who wouldn't be able to figure out a touchtone contraption. Or cavity back irons are just for beginners who wouldn't have a clue about hitting a golf ball with a forged blade. We could go on and on. Point being - there has always been and will always be a market for various types of products and throwing 'all users of that product' into a stereo type is akin to a admitting a narrow, limited, blinded focus bordering on fanatic. That being said, AOL (which I personally do not use living overseas) is such a product used by all types of users with as well as without knowledge of how to use another ISP. However, they 'choose' to use. 19 million of them (so far). That's the important word - choose. Be it People Magazine, Mac computers, cordless touchtone phones or Callaway X-12 irons. I've ordered the new 'Manual' to see what has been said about AOL. I know Geoff Moore has spoken about it at length on the GG e-mail list over the past year. BB