Anyone checking e-mail on AOL these days will probably be confronted with multiple entreaties to try the company's broadband service, the keystone of America Online's new determination to charge a premium for online information and entertainment.
If there is symbolic meaning to Steve Case's decision to step down as chairman of the world's largest media company this week, it may lie in the message underscored by the insistent marketing: It is time for the online service to start pulling its own weight.
Case, the archetypal Internet visionary, became famous for his grand notions of how the infant online medium would change the world. But even as many of those visions have become reality over the last decade, the online industry is still struggling to turn them into a viable business.
At AOL Time Warner and dozens of other media companies, tolerance for talk of digital revolutions and electronic frontiers has long since worn thin. No longer willing to coddle a not-so-new technology, investors are pressing for Internet companies and the online divisions of media conglomerates to be held to a grown-up standard of profitability.
Analysts note that the self-appointed Internet visionaries at Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi Universal and Thomas Mittelhoff at Bertelsmann, have already been ousted as their boards acted upon investor unrest.
"We're at the point where media companies are realizing, `We can't subsidize our online operations ad infinitum; they have to start paying their way,'" said Jonathan Gaw, an Internet analyst at the market research firm IDC. "Steve Case clung to the vision and didn't pay enough attention to the practicalities."
Most Internet companies, including AOL, became a lot more practical after the stock boom ended. In many ways, Case's departure is simply the culmination of a process that began when the AOL service began to drag AOL Time Warner's share price down nearly two years ago. AOL's problems are a legacy of its own tradition of giving away easy-to-use discs that quickly gave Internet access to anyone with a computer, modem and telephone line.
For years the online service benefited from the rapid acquisition of customers for its dial-up service, on which it had a healthy profit margin. But more recently the migration of many subscribers to faster broadband services has meant that the company will make less money from each subscriber, unless it can convince them to pay an additional fee for exclusive online access to its content -- in many cases material from other AOL Time Warner properties, like Time magazine and Warner music artists.
But in some important respects, analysts say AOL's problems are also emblematic of the Internet industry as a whole. As a social phenomenon, the Internet has been a huge hit. An ever-growing number of consumers -- 103 million US households, according to Odyssey Research -- use the Internet to e-mail one another and to find information. But few seem willing to pay for anything other than access to their e-mail.
"The Internet transforms the way the world works, that is true," said Harold Vogel, a media analyst and author of Entertainment Industry Economics. "The question is how do you make money on it, and that is still unanswered."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique