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

To: Baz Luhrman who wrote (13561)	2/22/1999 7:37:00 AM
From: Frederick Smart	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

>>Subj: End of the Road..... Date: 2/22/99 6:02:46 AM Central Standard Time From: FKSmart To: Steve Case Steve: I've been a long-time loyal user of AOL, going all the way back to the early days - Fall of '93. If I don't hear from someone of significance regarding this message I will have to assume AOL's significance to me and many others out there has finally gotten to the point where.....why bother. If if wasn't for Netscape or IE - on a direct basis via AOL - I would not have remained with AOL as a user. Your embedded browser has caused me more problems during the time I have been on the web that I gave up long ago using it. Now I'm having problems using Netscape and people out there are telling me that AOL did something to cause problems for other browsers you may have on your hard-drive. Example: I use I-Link's V-Link unified messaging product: www.i-link.net. I can get onto their V-Link unified messaging page with ALL other computers that do NOT use AOL. I cannot get on with my AOL/Netscape, my AOL/IE-Download or with my AOL/IE-Embedded. Example: Two years ago I was having problems copying and pasting text into Yahoo message boards and SI message boards. Went with Netscape and these problems disappeared. Since now I'm having problems with AOL/Netscape I went back to AOL/IE and the SAME problem with copying and pasting onto message boards that are NOT AOL's is still there. AMAZING! Everywhere I go the story from friends, neighbors, colleagues, business associates is that "you have to get off AOL.......that's what's causing your problems." Example: Netfusion - www.netfusion.com - is a FREE ISP which I signed up for recently to check out there wares. I can download, sign-up and login with any other non-AOL computer. Again, the word I get back is "the problem is with AOL." This AOL problem is beginning to become a chorus everywhere I go. The problem is, is that it's really confirming itself in reality. I have experienced these problems FIRSTHAND and as long-term user of AOL I have simply ignored the feedback....until now. For the past 2 years, I have been a very active contributor to AOL's MF Message boards on Novell. I posted this message yesterday as an example of how I feel: Subject: End of the Road for AOL.... Date: 2/21/99 5:38 PM Central Standard Time From: FKSmart Message-id: <19990221183836.24247.00001644@ng08.aol.com> I have been a loyal AOL user for some time, but I am about at the end of my rope with their ISP services. Don't know about others on this board, but it seems like AOL's ISP access is a distant poor cousin to the field of "open standards" being populated around the web these days. AOL's browser is not compatible with so many sites and services on the net. The list grows with each week. There's a company I've been working with that will automatically resynchronize ALL your email's at sites all across the internet for the email currently being used - fksmart - into a competely new email address for a new site or whatever. This service will unbundle Hotmail and other email services that think they have the game down. I cannot mention this service, but we plan to use it in our technology infrastructure going forward. Steve Case, if you are listening, the end of the road is coming closer. As this next wave gets underway you will find an explosion of new energy and fragmentation that will blow the recent internet consolidation wave to bits as new entrants and players that really embrace openness and freedom are welcomed by a growing number of netizens. Yahoo, AOL, Excite, Lycos and others.....just watch out. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot create and maintain virtual pyramids in the way the current portal companies have a design for creating. Novell's technology will allow this energy to be released in more ways that one. I hope I can resolve this issue with AOL. I don't use AOL for anything else. Novell and email are the last two links to my longstanding stake in AOL. If this is happening to me, what does that say for the 16-17 million other AOL users? I think the bloom is off the rose. I'm usually premature on predicting the demise of anything, but I'm good at seeing the overall trend of these things. As this new trend takes shape the AOL's of the world will have an openness arbitrage working against them. Take care. Ida5683 ================== So, again, back to you Steve.....I hope I hear back from you personally. I live and work in the securities industry. I have a ton of contacts on Wall Street. I have always felt that AOL could do so much more in many more areas when it came to server-centric apps for businesses, am impressed with your purchase of ICQ and Netscape....but more confused than every as to how you think you are going to manage this blob in a coherent whole when I as a user am using AOL less and less and am now more motivated than ever to move my account elsewhere. Steve, if you want this chorus to stop you have to respond back to people like me who are in business, have lots of contacts and who are ridiculed for staying with AOL. Perhaps your whole game is to offload us onto Netscape directly for you knew these problems all along and needed to contain and build-up the "newbees" before they, too, got frustrated . In any event, I'm not expecting a personal call or message back, but if you care to get inside my head and really understand this frustration that's building in so many quarters of this world against AOL, then I suggest you call or have someone call me personally. Fred Smart President Smart Bandwidth, LLC Evanston, IL www.smartbandwidth.com ------------------------------- Not part of original message.... PS - The potential deal with Worldcom WILL help, but these repeated problems and the lack of integrated value-added content that's in AOL's domain will force you to enter the server-centric app-game BIG-TIME....