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

To: re3 who wrote (54494)	4/4/1999 1:14:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Howard, See Tommasano's note about trying to disconnect from AOL. Maybe their customers just don't have staying power when trying to quit. I have no idea why people subscribe and then stay with an overpriced service. I suppose it is because AOL is easy. I know that trying to set up some of the better known competitors, like MSN and AT&T, is a pain in the neck and their tech support is useless. But Prodigy is just as easy and it costs less. PDQ net is also easy. So, there are alternatives. I think many folks have heard of AOL, it is no their icon screen, and that is the name of the game. The extra $5 a month is not worth the effort of moving. MB

To: re3 who wrote (54494)	4/4/1999 2:19:00 PM
From: TheStockFairy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Community, ease of use, advertising and non-technical users. Remember, most people still think a floppy disk occurs when you hurt your spine. Below is a blurb on AOL as a whole and the plusses and minus' of their business from a customer's perspective. zdnet.com Right now all we have been hearing about is "eyeballs." With no doubt AOL is the best positioned in the internet for the eyeballs. If all of your users MUST go through your portal to do anything else, you have a real captive audience to get your advertising message across. It appears that this approach as been working to some degree with companies like Tel-save which advertises through AOL ("sorry you are cancelling your aol account, thank you for your business and we will change LD provider for you at no extra charge :) ) DISCLAIMER I am a former AOL employee. I like AOL stock because "it goes up." I don't own any now, and probably will never buy it again. I understand that the advertising business is going through changes regarding web investments.