Spinning Off AOL
from the forget-the-whole-thing dept
Here's a Reuters article looking at the possibility of AOL-Time Warner spinning off AOL (basically negating the whole merger from a few years back). Most people think this is highly unlikely, but it's still a possibility. Of course, this seems to be the reverse move of all those companies that spun off their internet divisions at the height of the bubble, and are now snapping them back up. Buy high, sell low. Excellent business strategy.
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WooHoo !
Many say that AOL's (and many other ISP's) only hope is broadband. Well AOL-TW are competing against themselves as AOL's Broadband has to muscle in on existing Time Warner RoadRunner customers. And now that Time Warner inked a deal to provide pipe for Earthlink's Broadband, AOL has even more competition right in their own backyard.
"The company seems to be betting that Pittman's marketing and advertising savvy will help drive growth..." LOL ! Oh that's good. Can ANYONE name 1 AOL commercial that didnt insult your intelligence or make you sit slack-jawed in awe at the stupidity of the flashing pictures coming from your TV with the AOL logo all over them ?
AOL's biggest marketing mistake in the broadband arena is its missing the geeks completely. If you want to adopt a new technology or service, get a bunch of geeks excited about it, make them your base and build from there. So when grandma has her geek grandson over to fix her computer and he starts yammering on and on about broadband service while he is downloading a driver for her scanner - she (the decidedly non-geek) will have a good interest in checking this new fangled stuff out.
And I would just like to close by saying, Robert Pittman if you personally had anything to do with any of the stupendously stupid AOL commercials that exist now or have ever existed I want to UPS some dog feces to you.
The only bad thing is that if AOL goes down, it will take them about a month to figure out some way to blame it on Microsoft.
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Re: WooHoo !
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C'mon, don't forget why the transaction happend in
And that's what happened! He got to swap his shares for TW shares; got to sell some when it was high, and retire. Best of all, the press did the heavy lifting of trying to justify the purchase!
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