What is AOL?

Posted on May 14, 2010 | 1 comment

What the heck is AOL.com? Does anyone remember?

Upon arriving home to Orlando the other evening, I sat down on a bench to wait for my bag at the airport. As I sat and messed with my phone, I overheard a woman walking by who was giving her email address to the person on the other end of the line.

All of a sudden I heard it. It seemed as if my ears had tuned out everything else she was saying until I listened to her say “@aol.com”. My head immediately picked up to look at this woman talking on the phone. I wanted to know who was still using an AOL email address nowadays. I admit…I did chuckle.

Say Google. Talk about Facebook. Send a tweet on Twitter. AOL once was a well-known brand name as common as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are today.

What the heck happened?

AOL remained firm on their business strategy and the world around them changed. AOL was super when the internet was new. However, as people became accustomed to web browsers the need for AOL diminished.

It goes to show you how important it is to keep you business strategy flexible and current. The economy and your business market continuously change. Very few businesses find sustainability over long periods of time without revisiting their business strategy and approach on a consistent basis. In this case, the market changed and AOL tried to remain firm under a strategy that was successful in a previous era.

A good friend and business partner of mine was telling myself yesterday about how his two children stumbled across a rotary phone. “Dad, what is that?” they asked him. How fast times change. It’s kind of funny to think about how our children look cross-eyed at a rotary dial phone. It’s almost as funny as when I heard that woman give an @aol.com email address.

The Rotary Phone