When the movie, You’ve Got Mail appeared in 1998, no one needed to be told that America Online (AOL) would be prominently featured.
It was through AOL that the two main characters in this romantic comedy—Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan—found offline happiness through an online romance.
The film was aptly timed to boost AOL’s popularity. By 1997, about half of all American homes with Internet access had it through AOL.
Founded in 1983, AOL began began as a short-lived venture called Control Video Corporation (or CVC). Its sole product was an online service called GameLine for the Atari 2600 video game console.
Subscribers bought a modem from the company for $50 and paid a one-time $15 setup fee.
On May 24, 1985, Quantum Computer Services, an online services company, was founded by Jim Kimsey from the remnants of Control Video.
Kimsey changed the company’s strategy, and in 1985, launched a dedicated online service.
During the early 1990s, the average subscription lasted for about 25 months and accounted for $350 in total revenue. AOL greatly expanded its customer rolls by distributing free AOL trial disks through companies like The Good Guys and Circuit City. At one point, 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo.
By 1997, about half of all U.S. homes with Internet access had it through AOL.
AOL’s Silicon Valley branch office
Over the next several years, AOL launched services with the a wide range of educational organizations, including:
- The National Education Association
- NPR
- The American Federation of Teachers
- National Geographic
- The Library of Congress.
A big draw for AOL customers was its “Instant Messenger” service. Launched in 1997, it allowed AOL members to “chat” with each other. No other online service had anything like it, and AOL refused to share the technology that made this possible.
(Eventually, an anti-monopoly lawsuit by the Justice Department forced AOL to share its “Instant Messenger” technology with its online rivals.)
By 1998, anyone with an Internet-connected computer could access AOL for free. Its revenues were now driven by ads companies eagerly paid to showcase their services or products.
In January 2000, AOL and Time Warner announced plans to merge, forming AOL Time Warner, Inc. AOL shareholders would own 55% of the new, combined company. The deal closed on January 11, 2001.
At the time, it seemed a merger made in heaven. It would supposedly allow Time Warner to digitise its content and reach out to a new online audience. And AOL would gain access to Time Warner’s cable systems, innovative broadband capability and additional content to provide to its 27 million customers.
Yet by 2002 the merger resulted in a net loss of $99 billion, the largest loss ever reported by a company. By 2009, the merger-marriage was over. Time Warner Chief Jeff Bawkes called it “the biggest mistake in corporate history.”
In June, 2017, AOL warned its customers that, starting in August, they would have to pay about $5 a month to access its services. The company was switching to a “new, improved” version called AOL Gold.
As usually happens when new software is launched, there were bugs all around in it. A complainant to the Pissed Consumer website wrote:
“If I have to pay I don’t want to see ads all over my mail, reading or when I’m writing. Send to later folder is all messed up. It seems to crash more & runs slower….
“I read an email & clicked on ‘mark unread’ when I tried to pull it back up I only got the heading but NOT the info. Trying to send email to a group of friends & being told there is a problem, but no idea what is wrong. I always used this group in my 9.8 desktop with no problems.”
And another customer wrote: “Aol gold sucks.90% of the time I get error to load account.”
A third customer: “Spent 4.5 hours waiting for aol gold to import my old pfc [Private Filing Cabinet–where emails are stored] only to find it imported the wrong version of my favorites…. Then spent 3.5 hours on a remote tech call where he repeatedly uninstalled and reinstalled gold with the same results.”
Other problems include:
- AOL shutting off immediately after sending an email
- The lack of a “Clear Toolbar History” function (as was available on the “old” AOL)
- The inability to transfer an image from the Internet (such as a beautiful seascape) to the desktop (another feature that was also available previously)
Customers who call AOL’ at (888) 265-3733 and press “1” for “support on your existing AOL account” automatically get transferred to the billing department. So anyone seeking technical help needs to press “2”.
But AOL apparently doesn’t have enough techs trained in its new Gold technology. So there is usually a long wait before one of them comes on the phone. This means that if you’re calling on a cell phone, you can easily run out of battery time before your problem is resolved.
Then, in early October, AOL announced that, on December 15, it would shut down its Instant Messenger service.
The reason: Competing “chat” systems—such as texting, Gchat and Facebook—have replaced Instant Messenger as go-to forms of communication.
Nor does AOL plan to replace its Instant Messenger service.
Perhaps only the movie business can rival AOL for sheer self-destructiveness. Once “the big dog on the block,” AOL now risks the fate of dogs sent to the pound.
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ARROGANT EMPLOYERS MEET LYING JOB-SEEKERS: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 27, 2020 at 5:51 amUntil recently, only organized crime witnesses with a price on their head could obtain falsified job histories. But no more.
Thousands—if not millions—of job-seeking Americans are now able to obtain stellar job references to impress potential employer. And they’re doing it the unconventional way: They’re hiring companies to create them.
One such company is CareerExcuse.
CareerExcuse runs 200 fictional companies that don’t exist, have staffs or make money.
But for a fee, you can say you worked at one of them, and they’ll confirm you were an outstanding employee.
For between $100 and $200, you’ll get:
Unlike the Federal Witness Security Program (WITSEC) the clients of CareerExcuse aren’t hardened criminals.
They are legitimate citizens trying to erase gaps in their resumes. Or they have worked for a long series of short-term employers and want to appear a stable employee.
Click here: CareerExcuse Job References
Or they’ve acquired–deservedly or not–a series of bad job references
“Some people see it as unethical,” Jennifer Hatton, senior partner at CareerExcuse, said in a 2015 interview with Business Insider.
But, said Hatten, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t deserve a shot, just like the next person” if you do have the skills and experience required.
“There are many things that happen in people’s lives, with [employers] going out of business, being laid off, managers just unrightfully firing you, sexual harassment suits—-you name it, it happens in the workforce.”
And it’s true.
An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.
Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it reveals such truths as:
And in its June 8, 2011 cover-story on “What U.S. Economic Recovery? Five Destructive Myths,” Time magazine warned that profit-seeking corporations can’t be relied on to ”make it all better.”
Wrote Rana Foroohar, Time‘s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business:
“There may be $2 trillion sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations globally, but firms show no signs of wanting to spend it in order to hire workers at home.”
Meanwhile, CareerExcuse claims to have more than 2,000 job-seeking clients.
“Our main clientele right now is IT executives, and they’re pretty high-level,” Hatton claimed. The average customer seeks a salary of $60,000 to $80,000.
There are areas of employment that CareerExcuse refuses to fill—medicine, government, law enforcement or government. Jobs where your employment would “put other people in danger,” said Hatten. These are also employers capable of conducting serious background investigations.
Hatton claimed that during the almost two years she had been with CareerExcuse, no one had ever discovered a faked background.
But William Schmidt, who founded the company, admitted to Motherboard that a fake reference could easily be punctured: “All it would take is one person to drive to that address and go to that office.”
And the inevitable result would be immediate termination.
For some users of CareerExcuse, the company has proven an infuriating disappointment.
Click here: 17 CAREER EXCUSE complaints and reports @ Pissed Consumer
Like many clients of the Federal Witness Security Program, they complain of promises not kept. Among their complaints on Pissed Consumer, a consumer-complaint website:
Throughout the United States, countless numbers of lazy, greedy, arrogant and/or incompetent employers are refusing to hire. And millions of willing-to-work Americans remain trapped in unemployment or under-employment as a result.
Until this situation changes, companies like CareerExcuse will continue to function—and proliferate.
Such a change isn’t going to happen tomorrow.
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