3 ms·

How AOL?

• adventured 9y ago
  That's a pretty far reach re AOL.... However, AOL went from being a small, scrappy upstart service provider to being the 800 pound gorilla that wielded increasingly significant media power, in just the span of 5-7 years. One moment they were subservient to the classic media powers, smaller than a mid-size magazine publisher. The next, they were lording over the media powers as a larger, potentially more powerful corporation worth $220 billion with tens of millions of subscribers (and it sure looked like they were going to get much larger). In the media world, AOL was just starting to become as feared as Microsoft was broadly when they purchased Time Warner. That completely shook the media landscape. This is mostly forgotten now, because that position lasted for only a few years. AOL at its peak, was starting to near Microsoft's financial position circa 1995-1996 or so. Their stock went from $7 to $175 in two years from 1997 to 1999. Their revenue went from $425 million in 1995, to $4.77 billion four years later ($762m in net income, with $1.1b in cash from operations) - nearly unbelievable growth for anything consumer Internet related at the time. Just as they arrived at burgeoning juggernaut status, it all began to unravel.
  • colejohnson66 9y ago
    Not entirely related, but to comment on how big AOL was: I once heard that AOL sent out so many CDs that more than 90% of all CDs being produced in the world were for AOL
    • creaghpatr 9y ago
      There was a period in the late 90s where every other box of cereal had an AOL CD taped to the box.
  • cirgue 9y ago
    > In the media world, AOL was just starting to become as feared as Microsoft was broadly when they purchased Time Warner. That completely shook the media landscape. This, and their 'walled garden' vision of consumer internet was exactly what I was thinking when including them in the list.