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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M2 who wrote (71869)	12/14/1999 8:24:00 AM
From: gnuman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

AOL's long term threat to share? I suspect the biggest threat to AOL's growth and long term subscriber share is increasing net literacy. As users become more proficient in using the net, (and search tool's get better at matching results to the users want's), what is there about AOL that would continue to grow or maintain share? It's expensive and slow compared to many of the ISP's, including the Telco's. While the alliance between portals and "brick and mortar" may grow share in the near term, in the long haul I think it won't have much impact on maintaining or growing share. (Would I rather subscribe to AOL and go through their hassle to get to Walmart, or just go to Walmart?) I don't know what the demographics of AOL's subscriber base is, but I suspect it's heavily populated with users that need AOL's link's. As they become more fluent in the net, this becomes less of a factor. JMHO's