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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Robinett who wrote (6613)	12/30/1997 8:26:00 PM
From: Alec Epting	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

From the Internet Stock Report: In the 'I can't believe this was one of the mild dogs of 1996 yet one of the beauties of 1997' category the easy winner for most zoom was Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO - news) which led Wall Street on a 500-plus percent blastoff from December 31, 1996 to December 29, 1997. Pundits tip--Look for Yahoo as the AOL killer. Upside: Traffic. Downside: Traffic doesn't always mean ads or commerce no more than browsers in the local mall translate into buyers. Sometimes its just loitering.

To: Steve Robinett who wrote (6613)	12/30/1997 8:37:00 PM
From: Brent D. Beal	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13594

All AOL will say is that Christmas purchasing has doubled--they won't give numbers. Wonder why? Betcha my local mall trounced whatever they supposedly sold over their service. Let's see, if my local mall were valued at a forward p/e of 157. . . Seriously, commerce is where things are headed and AOL is trying to play the middle man--if there is once place on earth that an 3rd party broker relationship will not work, it's in cyberspace where time, distance, and to a certain extent, location, are irrelevant. AOL might as well be trying to squeeze shit out of tulips. Just isn't going to work. If Cybermeals is successful to any degree, they will simply leave AOL. The only adjustments their customers will have to make is a single mouseclick to add a new bookmark--that's it--and they save $20 million. In all fairness, AOL just doesn't have a chance with their current business model, which isn't to say that they may not be able to morph themselves into something else and might eventually be able to find a defendable niche, but it's going to be a long hard road. . .