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AOL.Com
 
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AOL.Com (Paperback)
by Kara Swisher (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 19 customer reviews (19 customer reviews)

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Product Description
Synopsis
This tells of how Steve Case beat Bill Gates, nailed the Netheads, and made millions in the war for the Web.'

From the Publisher
The first inside account of what goes on at America Online
Every so often, an entire industry is created from almost nothing, capturing the imagination of millions of consumers, while setting off a titanic clash for money, power, and dominance among major corporations. Such has been the case with the Internet and the online services industry since its mainstream emergence in the early 1990s. And of the many companies vying to create empires in cyberspace, none is now better known than America Online.

Like Coca-Cola to soda drinkers or Kleenex to snifflers, AOL has become the brand name of this emerging medium. In aol.com, Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher draws on her unprecedented access to provide an insider's account of how a small computer games service became a multibillion-dollar powerhouse serving more than 12 million subscribers. "This is a remarkable story of entrepreneurship, of hard-won victories and flat-footed stumbles, of the unusual and complex people who have worked to create a part of this incredible new communications medium," says Swisher, who covered AOL and the Internet for The Washington Post from 1994-97.

Going beyond the headlines, Swisher puts readers in the passenger seat of one of the most gut-wrenching roller coaster rides any company has ever taken. Among its many valleys: the 1996 19-hour service outage that infuriated customers, and the precipitous stock drop that cut AOL's market value by two-thirds. Among the peaks: only 18 months later, when the number of subscribers reached an astounding 11 million and the company earned $20.8 million on revenues of $592 million.

And yet, throughout its history, AOL has repeatedly been written off by the media and countless high-tech experts. Led by dogged CEO Steve Case, an unlikely captain of industry, the company has survived bitter challenges from Microsoft, CompuServe, Prodigy, and even the Christian Right.

Swisher illustrates how, in the 1980s, such forward-thinking companies as CompuServe, CBS, Sears, IBM, Apple, and Knight-Ridder newspapers were slow! to understand this new technology's potential and unwilling to fund its development. "As difficult as it is to imagine, as late as 1992, there was no commercial Internet, no World Wide Web," she notes. "And few -- especially investment houses -- had any true belief in consumer networking as anything more than a fad, much like CB radios."

Often accused of having the same insular hubris that plagued Apple and IBM, AOL has been criticized as heedless with its customers and business practices. It spent hundreds of millions of dollars blanketing America with its software disks. Its technical glitches and lapses in customer service have been almost unforgivable. Yet as Swisher demonstrates, it is precisely because of AOL's loose corporate culture, prophetic timing, and alliances with unlikely partners that it has become the industry leader. Above all, the key to its success has been Case's vision of what an online service could be -- not just a shopping center or a business tool, but a real community.

Swisher exposes numerous inside stories about how AOL:

@ survived an early hostile takeover bid by Paul Allen and a less hostile one by Microsoft.

@ pulled off a surprise double-deal in Web browsers to offer customers both Netscape's Navigator and and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

@ carried out a highly memorable, risky, and innovative branding campaign by carpet-bombing America with more than 250 million free disks.

@ deals with the problem of "churn" -- new members using their free time, then canceling without paying a dime for the service.

@ regained its position after the 1996 restating of financial results that wiped out all the profits AOL ever made.

@ grew its usage from 46 million hours to 125 million hours in a five month period from September 1996 to February 1997, creating thorny access problems.

@ reacted when thousands of customers threatened to desert AOL when asked to limit their "unlimited" use, and again when AOL planned to release! client data to telemarketers.

@ deals with the tricky issues of privacy and freedom of speech in cyberspace.

According to Swisher, Case made a brilliant move by recruiting MTV founder Bob Pittman to become president and second-in-command, thereby positioning AOL at the forefront of the next wave of new media and information services. But the big question remains: Is AOL going to last? "The truth is: nobody knows," Swisher concludes. "In the spanking new world of the Internet, nobody knows at all because everyone and everything has just been born." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


 
Customer Reviews
19 Reviews
5 star: 47%  (9)
4 star: 31%  (6)
3 star: 10%  (2)
2 star: 5%  (1)
1 star: 5%  (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelent book, 10 Jun 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: aol.com (Hardcover)
I think this is an excelent book. Very well writen with full of real life examples about community, communications and people.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The history of an online cornerstone is worth reading., 7 Oct 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: aol.com (Hardcover)
This is a good book, detailing Steve Case's journey in building AOL. Roughly the first half of the book covers birth through the early 90s, and the remainder is devoted to extensive discussion of AOL's many changes in response to the growth of the Internet.

Often described as a cockroach in cyberspace (in more ways than one), America Online has repeatedly defied critics by sustaining its growth and success through repeated hard times. In going from a distant third (behind Compuserve and Prodigy) to becoming the undisputed top proprietary service, the story of AOL takes the reader through a variety of issues which are still very relevant to the Internet in general (e.g. AOL has been dealing with online pornography, first amendment issues, spam, etc. for years).

This book is well-researched, well-written, and very interesting. Whatever your own opinions of AOL, if you are at all interested in the past and future of the online world, you owe it to yourself to learn about AOL and why it is so hugely successful.

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Part one of the history of America Online (AOL.com), 3 Nov 2002
By Gerard Kroese (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Kara Swisher has covered AOL and the Internet for the business section of The Washington Post since 1994. Now reporting on Silicon Valley for The Wall Street Journal, she lives in San Francisco. This updated version, published in 1999, included an new epilogue by the author.

The book starts with the now legendary meeting between the world-richest man Bill Gates (founder and chairman of Microsoft) and Steve Case (now chairman of AOL) in May 1993. In this meeting, Gates makes the following proposal to Case: "I can buy 20 percent of you or I can buy all of you, or I can go into this business myself and bury you." In hindsight, we now know that Gates did not buy America Online and did not bury them either. With this conversation in the background Swisher discusses the roots, the lack of business plan, the strategy changes (through which AOl got the nickname cockroach: "... a bug you couldn't kill no matter how hard you tried."), the people involved, the battles with Microsoft, Prodigy and CompuServe, the financial problems, the legal problems, the acquisitions of Netscape and various other companies, and Steve Case's vision (the three C's - "communication, community, clarity"). Most of the information comes from inside the company itself, where Swisher has interviewed the numerous people involved, but as a Washington Post-journalist there is plenty of external information.

Although this excellent book is about one of the best-known brands in cyberspace, it is perfectly readable for non-Internet geeks (like me). Yes, yes, I know, there are plenty of names and Internet terms around, but that doesn't even make this a bad and difficult read. I see this book as the first part in the history of America Online (AOL), from pre-startup through to late-1998. But plenty has happened since 1998 and I do expect the author to write another book on those events?!?

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent background on a company everyone thought would die
This book does an excellent job of telling the story of AOL's rise to the top while being knocked by absolutely everyone. Read more
Published on 8 April 1999

3.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a newspaper
Pretty interesting account of the AOL story. This would have been a lot better if more of a business perspective was used to discuss and analyze the strategies that made AOL the... Read more
Published on 10 Mar 1999

2.0 out of 5 stars anecdotes
Having listened to Ms Swisher's knowledgeable interview on national public radio's "fresh air" I looked forward to this work. Unfortunately I was disappointed. Read more
Published on 8 Mar 1999

4.0 out of 5 stars AOL.com=Marketing Genius
Essentially,it was marketing that sold AOL to millions of net newbies.Actually,it's Bill Gates that beat Steve Case in the short run,w/the inclusion,through a deal to put the AOL... Read more
Published on 5 Dec 1998

4.0 out of 5 stars how aol amazed everybody, including bill gates!
interesting reading for both aol and non-aol users . . . it amazes me how aol has gotten so large, so quickly . . . Read more
Published on 30 Aug 1998

1.0 out of 5 stars Go Right To BURN RATE
I've just read two books that tell the AOL story. This one and BURN RATE. This one acts like AOL is just another good-luck entreprenurial success story, la-di-dah. Read more
Published on 22 Jul 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of an Innovator
It is unusual for a business book, much less one on the high-tech industry, to start with an elegy, but this is precisely what happens ui Kara Swisher's absorbing account on the... Read more
Published on 16 Jul 1998

4.0 out of 5 stars Scathing look at AOL's unethical business practices
A better subtitle for this book would be: "How Steve Case and AOL bilked their customers and deceived investors by consistently aiming at the lowest common denominator. Read more
Published on 16 Jul 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone interested in the Internet
Thoughtful, well written, and entertaining, aol.com delivers an inspirational tale of success and determination. Read more
Published on 15 Jul 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for anyone interested in the birth of the 'net.
This book is the first I've seen that takes an in-depth (and it was extremely in-depth) look at the trials and tribulations of AOL. Read more
Published on 15 Jul 1998

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