In My Experience: AOL

Testing AOL Journals.

2003-07-17T09:37:53-05:00

Internal beta testing of AOL Journals opened up yesterday, and I have dutifully started an AOL Journals blog and posted my suggestions and comments to the appropriate forums. It's no secret that AOL is doing this, but I didn't know any real details until yesterday. Also, I re-read the note about not leaking details, so this post is pretty restrained.

Here's a few tidbits that I think are not embargoed, but aren't really that juicy...

The set up was stupid easy. I mean, my daughter could do it, and she's 9 weeks old.
NetNewsWire can read my Journal's RSS file.
The instant messaging conduit works pretty well, and I think IM blogging is a good thing.
There's one thing about commenting that I like and hate at the same time. I'll rant and rave about this when the product goes public.

It's a good start, and it's not a "premium" service (as in, I don't have to pay extra dollars to have an AOL Journal) so I'm pretty hopeful that this thing will take off. The basics are there and it's pretty solid.

[Disclaimer: I do not work on the Journals product. It should be assumed that any product still under development will change, so don't expect anything I say here to be true when this thing goes live. Be sure to read around for a lot more info that I can provide.]

Netscape.

2003-07-16T09:13:12-05:00

Recently I speculated about the demise of Netscape, and more to the point, that Netscape would not meet an untimely end. Apparently, I was wrong, and it's pretty depressing to see it happen.

The point I made about the MSFT/AOL deal was that AOL would still prefer to NOT place control of its business into the hands of its competitors. That's definitely true, but I carried that into a hope that Netscape wouldn't be scuttled. At least Mozilla will carry on with active funding from the likes of AOL, IBM and Sun.

Who wins in this deal? I think I do.

2003-07-15T14:27:18-05:00

AOL and TiVo have a new service/feature available to those who are AOL subscribers and have a network enabled Series 2 TiVo. If you have that, then when you surf thru the TV listings at Keyword: Television, you can click on shows and have them be scheduled on your TiVo. In my opinion, that's pretty cool, but I can't figure out why AOL or TiVo thinks this is a great way to boost subscribers (or even if they do think that).

TiVo already has the Home Media Option which allows for remote scheduling and other media tom foolery. The remote scheduling is the only thing that makes me salivate, and they charge $100 for that privilege. If I'm an AOL subscriber, and I only want the remote scheduling, then this is a great deal, because I don't have to shell out an extra $100. If I wasn't already a subscriber, would this feature really lure me? And, since there are so few network enabled Series 2 TiVo's, how big can this market be? Why is TiVo willing to give away its best networking feature away to a potential audience of 30+ million people?

Business logic aside, I think this a great customer focused hack, even if it took me a while to find the feature (which, by the way, isn't vapor. It works right now). None of the news articles about this had any direction on where to use the feature, and I finally had the idea to read the original press release. It mentioned Keyword: Television, which when entered resulted in a search results page, which had a link to the actual Keyword: Television, which at the bottom of the page, said it was Keyword: TV.

After a few futile minutes of scanning that page, I finally thought of going thru the actual TV listings. I selected my provider and type of service and got a page with a listing of what's on TV right now. Since it's in a grid format, I assume AOL is paying royalties to Gemstar. Regardless, when you click on a specific show, you will see an item that says "Record on my TiVo DVR."

Doesn't that seem like a pretty convoluted process?

You've got blog.

2003-07-07T10:22:45-05:00

Apparently, AOL is doing a weblog product, and I'm guessing NDAs have been violated(?) I have only heard the rumors and know nothing more than what I read out there on the net. However, if any sort of internal beta testing is made available, you can bet I will check it out. In the meantime, some people already seem to have opinions...

Jeff Jarvis: AOL Blogs: Yesterday, I was one of a privileged council of blogging elders -- Meg Hourihan, Nick Denton, Anil Dash, Clay Shirky -- invited to see AOL's new blogging tools, which will be released later this year. They've done a good job.

Dave Winer: On AOL's entry into weblogs: Now their strategy is coming out, and there are some surprises. Today I'm going to discuss, briefly, just one, the Instant Messaging connection with weblog tools, and how it leads into the quagmire that the weblog world is caught up in (and a plea to swallow our respective prides and compromise now).

Kevin Lawver: Super Secret Agent Revealed!: The top secret meeting is now something I can talk about. I went to New York with the AOL Journals team to talk about the new AOL Journals product with some influential folks in the blogging world.

Outside my office window.

2003-07-02T13:52:08-05:00

Don't count Netscape out yet.

2003-05-30T09:58:48-05:00

There has been some pretty rampant speculation about what will happen to Netscape now that AOL has settled their dispute with MSFT to the tune of a $750 million settlement. Quotes like this from MSNBC are out there...

"Both AOL Time Warner and Microsoft win on this one," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with Giga Information Group. "Microsoft turns what had become an aggravating enemy into at least a marginal friend and possibly a cooperative partner. AOL gets much-needed cash and are able to divest themselves of units that were costing them money like the Netscape unit."

On the webdesign list, a short thread explored the possibilities of there being no Netscape or Mozilla, and there was one voice of reason ("S.Marshall") who said...

Even from a purely technical point of view (i.e. leaving aside the political), control over your code is a very good thing, because when you're using somebody else's software you can't fix their bugs or limitations (sure MAYBE if you have a close financial relationship you can put in a change request that MAYBE they'll handle in six months, but that's never good enough).

And this is an argument that I buy. I can't imagine that AOL would want to dumb Mozilla/Netscape 7 in favor of going blindly with IE over the better part of the decade. And, I haven't heard any rumors at all that AOL is going to dump Netscape (and generally, I hear rumors). And the Netscape folks don't only do a browser, they provide other services within AOL. But this isn't the only part of the MSFT deal that's worth talking about. Dick Parsons, the AOL Time Warner CEO said this in an internal email...

The settlement should also help us deliver an even better online experience to AOL members. The agreement provides that Microsoft will give us technical information and support to ensure the peak performance of the AOL service on current and future Windows operating systems. In addition, Microsoft will provide us with an enhanced ability to market the AOL service to consumers, including opening up a new channel to provide AOL software discs to computer manufacturers worldwide.

If AOL doesn't ship with every copy of Windows, the market penetration of the service would decline (more rapidly). So it's a good thing to have that access (imho, because they pay the bills at Chéz Kapusta). However, at the end of the day, I have to assume that AOL will not limit it's choices and place any control of its own destiny into the hands of a friend or rival.

I'll be the judge.

2003-04-29T09:53:28-05:00

Declan McCullagh of C|net mentions the following about Lawrence Lessig...

Lessig made an unusual wager: If Congress enacts an antispam law that offers bounties for the reporting of spammers, and the law fails to "substantially reduce the level of spam," he will resign from his dream job at a top law school.

Too bad congress has yet to do that, but we should note that the state of Virginia is signing into law today an anti-spam bill that AOL email to employees describes thusly...

Please join Jon Miller from 1:15 - 2:15 p.m., as AOL hosts this historic event, and hear remarks from Governor Warner, Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, Ted Leonsis, and others. Together, we will witness the signing of a new spam-fighting law for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and celebrate this significant step forward in the battle against spam on behalf of our members and the entire Internet community.

To support this event, my group has supplied a feed showing how many spams AOL has killed since midnight eastern time (and it's up on a jumbotron). The number climbs upwards very quickly (via DHTML); on the order of thousands per second, and I've been watching the number for weeks now, and have noticed the peak number has been accelerating upwards from over one billion a day to over 1.5 billion a day. That half billion increase has happened over the past month (but the number does ebb and flow, so YMMV).

I watch this data every day, all day (to be sure the spams killed feed is still running for use in other places), so when I see the aforementioned Declan McCullagh say...

He [Lessig] has asked me to be the judge of whether such a law proves effective in reducing the deluge of unsolicited e-mail that's clogging our in-boxes, snarling mail servers and driving Internet service providers to distraction. I've accepted.

I have to say that, I'll be the judge. Anyone else who wants to make up their own mind can go to AOL Keyword: Safety, or watch their own mail box, and make their own judgement.

Scale.

2003-03-31T17:04:52-05:00

Working on something that will be on the AOL Welcome Screen, or something linked from it, is sort of stressing. You simply can not fuck up, and you have to scale like a mo-fo. I've just completed an item (with tons of help from many other people) that will appear in that type of location. Now, I'm just a cog in the wheel, but I happen to be the cog where people actually see the spokes turning (metaphorically and realistically) and if it breaks, I'll be getting the 3am phone call.

It's a ticker of the amount of spam emails that have been killed (before they got to a member's mailbox) since midnight. It's a huge number, and ticks along in real time. The systems by which that data gets from one place to another, and finally gets represented on screen for the user, is equally big. This scale issue has been one of the things that has been hard to get used to over the last year, but I think I'm finally getting it.

One of the cool things is the architecture by which data is cached (or not) depending on the responsibilities of that data and how it will be consumed (all in an effort to conserve network resources). Also, equally cool is the ability to embed web stuff in the proprietary AOL screens and make it look like it's totally normal. That sort of thing makes me hopeful that more "normal" web technologies will be used to present users with the content they are there to consume, and thus make my skills more useful :)

We make it, you consume it, pay up.

2003-03-10T16:25:03-05:00

Last year Jamie Kellner said some semi-crazy things about watching TV and ignoring commercials...

Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots.

I felt that that position was kind of extreme, and that it wasn't a TiVo friendly position. When Kellner announced his pending resignation, I chuckled to myself that maybe his comments had caught up with him. But sadly, that attitude is burned-in like a video game on an EPROM (ie, a cartridge). For example, AOL is making a Tivo competitor that...

lets networks set the parameters, dictating which shows users can reschedule, and it also creates ways for networks to insert commercials.

And that is clearly the type of system that Kellner would approve of and is completely not focused on empowering/emboldening the consumer. In fact, I think I've noticed a fabric at AOL that is based on the idea that content is something to be delivered. As in, We make it, you consume it, pay up. I don't think the future of media (or journalism) is uni-directional.

Another AOL executive shuffle.

2003-02-28T10:27:45-05:00

AOL is just announcing (via email) another shuffle in the board room...

Steve Swad... has joined America Online as executive vice president and chief financial officer

Here's the part where it gets interesting...

Steve was vice president of financial planning and analysis for AOL Time Warner and vice president and deputy controller at Time Warner. Before joining Time Warner in 1998, he was a partner at KPMG LLP and deputy chief accountant with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission

That's a serious résumé and I'm glad to see that sort of experience taking a high profile role at AOL. The stock price seems to be benefitting from the announcement.

A drop in subs.

2003-01-31T16:34:09-05:00

The $100 billion dollar, year over year loss reported by AOL Time Warner concerns me less than the price of pickles in Pakistan. What does scare the shit out of me is this...

AOL's customer numbers fell by 170,000 in the last quarter, despite the aggressive launch of the latest version of its access software AOL 8.0, the giveaway of millions of free CDs offering trials of the service and an outlay of more than �600m on advertising and promotion.

A drop in subscriptions is not good. I always thought that there would be an increase of subs at AOL due in part to the massive promotions, but more importantly the points of presence (POPs) that AOL has. I never been anywhere that I couldn't get a local AOL dial-in phone number, and that ubiquity is valuable to me. A drop in subs really surprizes me.

Blockbuster?

2003-01-10T09:43:53-05:00

Last night I watched CNBC's special about the AOL Time Warner deal from three years ago, and it wasn't very flattering from the 'I work at ' perspective. One of the interviewees went as far to say that AOL is to Time Warner as Blockbuster is to Viacom. Which is supposed to mean that AOL can represent profitable returns and be a part of a portfolio of companies. AOL annual cash flow is in the $750 million area, which is a lot of movie rentals. Sheesh.

Anyway, what sort of rosy picture could be painted by CNBC (a MSFT funded operation) about a serious decline in 's stock valuation, thru the eyes of Time Warner people and the CEO's of its competitors? Not any that I can think of right now. But, maybe one will come to me in the coming months and years as, I hope, a career develops.

(ps, I watch CNBC all the time, and I like Dave Faber, who hosted this show, most likely wrote all of it, and did all of the interviews. He's a smart guy, and it was a good show, but it wasn't a warm and fuzzy evenin' at IMX headquarters, aka, home).

AOL makes good on a promise.

2002-12-13T10:21:56-05:00

As you likely already know, /Netscape has released Netscape 7.0.1 which includes the ~~old~~ new feature of blocking pop up adverts. Advertising is a core business for AOL, and fighting an advertising mechanism in favor of the user experience is good news. Recently the message coming out of Dulles has been about re-focusing on the customer/user experience. I'm glad to see some evidence of this out there on the public internet.

However, I can't imagine how many companies AOL must be pissing off by doing this, but then again, market penetration for Mozilla based browsers is barely in the range of what I would call "significant" so advertisers may not care. Stop and think about when AOL builds this into the AOL client, and keep in mind that uptake of new versions of the AOL client are robust to say the least (8.0 was released this fall, and I think it's already the most used version on the service).

When millions of user go to popup blocking, the popunder ad might become less viable. Unfortunately, according the C|Net "Netscape 7.01 comes with the pop-up filtering off by default."

An attempt to be more constructive in my critique on AOL.

2002-12-06T08:48:40-05:00

Ok, so I said the other day that I have my doubts about 's new plan of providing exclusive content on the AOL service. In an attempt to be constructive instead of being a wanker, here's what I would like to see out of...

I want downloads of MP3's, or Ogg files, or whatever format that is infinitely repayable using either the AOL client or WinAmp (and AOL property). The music industry has yet to come up a response to the MP3 threat. AOL should answer the big question. If they did, $5/month would be a music subscription I'd be interested in.

I want downloads, and lots of them. I want these downloads available at all times with no bandwidth caps or throttling. What I'm really looking for is a FileShack killer (FileShack is a file download service that offers a paid-for service with faster downloads and no download queues). Access to fast downloads of game patches (usually huge files) and Lord of the Rings previews, et al., and updates to software packages is worth at least $5/month. Downloading from FileShack is a BAD experience, and is an opportunity for AOL to leverage the AOL Transit Data Network and their user experience experience.

I want access to many of the magazines owned by the media conglomerate. This could be a Salon killer where the entire content of various magazines are made available thru SNS (see blow). Beating MSFT in this space is pure icing. Here's 2 or $3/month of value to me.

Enabling this architecture is the Screen Name Service (which you can see/use at the top of an AOL web property website, such as CSS, where you see the Netscape Network banner at the top). Being able to go to various websites to get access to tons of content with fast download times is a good user experience (which I said the other day is the baseline for ). A good user experience with valued content on top is something I'd pay for, but I'd like to see a $10/month price point. That's $120/year. Apple charges less than that for their bring your own access services.

[Some background info: Even though I work at AOL, I have no inside information on AOL's plans, proposals or ideas for the future other than what has been published thru public media outlets like CNBC (which I watch too much). I'm not even close to being an important person at the company, but I sure do have my opinions.]