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I know their dialup service provides lotsa LOLs, but that is not AOL's actual business.
by serve_yay 11y ago
I know their dialup service provides lotsa LOLs, but that is not AOL's actual business.
- Animats 11y agoStrangely, dial-up is their actual business. Most of Aol's profits come from their remaining 2.2 million subscribers, still sending in about $20 per month.[1] That's half a billion dollars a year. The average Aol user has been a customer for 14 years. Their attempted pivot into advertising and content has not done well.[2] Aol had a big layoff in advertising sales late last year. (Not good news if you're a Microsoft ad sales employee being sold to Aol.) [1] http://recode.net/2014/08/06/aols-amazing-inexplicable-money-factory/ http://recode.net/2014/08/06/aols-amazing-inexplicable-money... [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/us-aol-results-idUSBRE9470EM20130508 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/us-aol-results-idU...
- saalweachter 11y agoSo remember that the next time you write a simple, clean web page with a megabyte of javascript and css and other assets: there are still millions of people on a 56k dialup connection who are going to have to spend 2 minutes downloading it.