Here's a letter from the CEO of AOL, Steve Case. It came out in the premium section of AOL so I could not provide a link.
Three points I found motivating. (and for those of you who might not have the time to read it)
1-- The pace of innovation is intoxicating - but there's a very real risk that we can all be caught up in the announcements of the moment and lose sight of the bigger picture.
... something that cm and others had touched on.
2-- but it's important to recognize that the interactive medium is a global phenomenon.
... topic of recent discussion.
3-- Elements that make interactive media so compelling - communication, convenience and instant communication.
...The bottom line.
FDA
The letter...
May 8, 1998
Dear Members,
There's so much happening with the Internet these days, it's almost mind-boggling. New ideas, new services, new technologies, new companies -- all competing for our attention. The pace of innovation is intoxicating -- but there's a very real risk that we can all be caught up in the announcements of the moment and lose sight of the bigger picture. So sometimes I find it helpful to take a step back, and try to look at the emerging interactive medium -- and the future -- through a historical prism.
When you look back, you're struck by a very simple but compelling observation: every leap forward in communications has dramatically changed the lives of people all around the world.
Just look at the telephone. When the telephone emerged almost a century ago, it enabled people to connect with others -- not just in their neighborhoods, but around the world -- and daily life never was the same again.
A few years ago, another new communications technology -- the fax machine -- gave ordinary people in the Soviet Union the information that helped bring down that government and end the Cold War.
Last year, the first pictures transmitted from the Sojourner Mars rover were broadcast simultaneously throughout the world -- over the Internet. There were no filters. Each person who saw those photos saw exactly what the scientists at NASA were seeing - exactly when they were seeing them -- and the world held its collective breath, together, with them.
For a decade, we've spent a great deal of time and energy focusing on the growth and potential of the interactive medium in the United States. But it's important to recognize that the interactive medium is a global phenomenon. Two years ago, just over 23 million households were online around the world, the vast majority in the United States. That number has more than doubled in the last two years to 45 million households, with much of that growth driven by new Internet users in European markets and Japan. And the opportunity for this medium to really stretch its wings is increasingly overseas, in countries that are just now getting online, as well as highly populated countries like Russia, India and China that account for only about 3% of the online population today. Two years from now, as we enter the next century, the number of online households is expected to grow to more than 66 million, with almost half outside the U.S. And, of course, there will be tens of millions of others connected to the Internet through schools and businesses.
But numbers tell only part of the story. Of greater importance is what a truly global medium like the Internet can do to build a community for "ordinary" people all over the world.
When we launched our first service outside of the United States -- in Germany in November 1995 -- we knew that we had to keep the elements intact that make the interactive medium so compelling - community, convenience, and instant communications. But we also had to develop an experience that offered local content and a unique look and feel -- in short, a German service designed for Germans. There were those who doubted that popular services in the U.S., like chat, would be popular elsewhere in the world. Well, it turns out that people tend to use the interactive medium for the same things overseas that they do in the United States -- to get and share information quickly and efficiently, and to communicate with each other. We've found that Europeans love to chat as much as Americans!
When you give this a little more thought, it isn't so surprising. People are people. They want to communicate, share ideas, and be a part of their community and their world as much in Dusseldorf, Germany as in DeKalb, Illinois.
Given this common bond, the opportunities for building a stronger global community through the interactive medium are enormous. This means enabling people to interact with a wide variety of others, from many walks of life and all corners of the globe. Sure, you can use the medium to stay in touch with friends and relatives, and that's tremendously useful, especially in our increasingly mobile society. But what really boggles the mind is the ability of this medium to connect you to people who you otherwise would never have had a chance to meet. This provides us with a powerful tool for understanding other cultures, for developing relationships with people far away, and for engaging in commerce across borders.
As we help build this medium, we are aware of the growing number of public policy challenges we all face: respecting diverse cultural and national sensibilities; safeguarding privacy and security; ensuring that children have rewarding and safe experiences online; ensuring affordability and accessibility; and avoiding piecemeal country-by-country regulation of this borderless medium. With each additional ocean and threshold the interactive medium crosses, these challenges only grow.
When we launched that first German service, we did so because we saw the wonderful opportunities that would result from a global electronic gathering place. In those two-and-a-half years, we've grown to well over a million members outside of the U.S. - a feat that took nine years for us to achieve in this country! We now offer services with localized content and flavor in eight countries and four languages, as well as access numbers in more than 100 countries and 1,000 cities. Together with CompuServe Interactive Services, AOL Europe is now the largest pan-European provider of Internet online services with two million members. AOL Canada has become one of the leading services in Canada and AOL Japan just passed 100,000 members a year after launch. And we'll soon be adding to our family of international services when we launch in Australia and Hong Kong.
For our members, this means an incredible array of ways to share across cultures. Already, members need only click on AOL's International Channel to follow the progress of German soccer teams, or tour the museums of Amsterdam, or read a British newspaper. You can even log on to AOL to listen to the Marseilles on Bastille Day, or brush up on your Swedish, all without leaving your living room!
One of our most popular services in the AOL International channel is Country Information, where you can find sites on just about every country around the world from Latvia to Lesotho. On the individual country sites, members will find maps, travel tips (know how much to tip a taxi driver in Bangladesh?), information on culture and traditions, link to pen pals, learn language pointers (learn how to say hello in Magyarul!) and more.
And we're making it easy to travel the world and visit our global community, bringing guides to restaurants, hotels, sight-seeing, entertainment and much more to some of the world's most majestic and well traveled cities -- like London, Paris and Toronto.
And we are only just beginning to realize the benefits of this global medium for our members. As we add more ingredients, more services and more access to the world -- and as the Internet continues to become more robust and populated -- we will continue to build a service that offers you greater and greater opportunities to become members of a true global community. We encourage you to keep visiting the AOL International channel to explore your world.
And every once in a while, when you're online, take a moment to reflect how we are all pioneers building a brand new global community. Together, we are creating something very unique and special in our lifetime.
Warm Regards,
Steve Case |
