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AOL pretends to be the internet

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Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#141

Post by sylens »

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

Considering the level of computer knowledge and sophistication of most 90s users, this was a genius idea. The fact that it also served as a form of marketing and soft lock-in was also not overlooked

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#142

Post by CalRobert »

silisili wrote: post #5

If I'm honest, I kinda miss the AOL all in one approach. Email, news, stocks, chats, IMs, web search, all just there front and center. Easy to use, no trickery, no figuring out what sites or apps to use, as everyone else(generally) was on AOL. I wonder if an idea like that would work again - was just ahead of its time?

I grew up on Prodigy but I kind of miss it too. It was smaller then the internet but at the time (perhaps because it was new) it _felt_ bigger.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#143

Post by quickthrower2 »

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

Now it is search for XYZ and/or a picture of a rounded box with XYZ and a magnifying glass. Of course search === Google in this context.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#144

Post by rhplus »

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

The New York Times still has their list of AOL Keywords here!

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/info/help/aol-ke...

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#145

Post by Mezzie »

olig15 wrote: post #109
grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

I always assumed that ads that told people to search for the product/company were to raise their search ranking (due to relevancy?). But I’ve got no idea if that would actually make a difference or not, or if it is just so people don’t have to type a URL as you said.

The heyday of AOL keywords was before SEO or search engine relevancy was anything that any company cared about. Search engines existed, but this was mostly pre-Google and they were not great. A lot of discovery happened in other ways - the AOL keyword scheme was basically their attempt to tie web discovery to their products so people who left AOL wouldn't know what to do.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#146

Post by Anthony-G »

jb1991 wrote: post #137
neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #62

Anyone remember the first question their Tier-1 support would ask? "Do you own a computer?" This was due to the fact that most of the people who called for support didn't understand what a CD-ROM was, and tried playing it in their CD music players. That reminds me of one of the most popular questions in their chat rooms by the late 90's: "A/S/L?" While it did bleed over into other services, it was very AOL-centric. I…

Do you remember the people who thought the CD ROM drive of a computer was actually a cup holder?

I wouldn’t have thought that there were many people using computers who weren’t already familiar with audio CDs. While most portable players were top-loading, I remember the majority of home stereos having the slide-out tray. I would have thought anyone using computers at the time would also have been familiar with home stereo/hi-fi systems (even if they didn’t own one).

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#147

Post by quickthrower2 »

neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #62

Anyone remember the first question their Tier-1 support would ask? "Do you own a computer?" This was due to the fact that most of the people who called for support didn't understand what a CD-ROM was, and tried playing it in their CD music players. That reminds me of one of the most popular questions in their chat rooms by the late 90's: "A/S/L?" While it did bleed over into other services, it was very AOL-centric. I…

A/S/L "Dox yourself please, and I might even hit on you as a bonus"

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#148

Post by flangola7 »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #127
VHRanger wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cases like this I'd just make a QR code of the url

Then your tech support simply changes to guiding people in the use of QR codes.

Those numbers have to be very low now that we are post 2020.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#149

Post by rhplus »

giantrobot wrote: post #134
hulitu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's important to remember that AOL could have been they internet if the succeeded. Well, we now have 4 AOLs: Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.

Why is Apple included in that list? What service do they have that pretends to be "the Internet"?

iOS App Store. Plenty of iPhone users never knowingly open a browser or search engine. The internet is apps to them.

Other wall-garden networks offered by Apple include: AirDrop, Find My, iMessage

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#150

Post by lproven »

jandrese wrote: post #71
cuttysnark wrote: post #28

AOL had a 45 minute idle timeout, meaning you'd be logged out regardless of what was happening on your screen if you weren't moving the mouse or using the keyboard. This was a problem if you wanted to download files and have them in the morning. Making my first "idler" in Visual Basic (which sent a string of whatever song was playing in Winamp to a random AOL chatroom where I was the only person) meant my inactive ti…

That idle timeout was pretty important when AOL cost $1/hour (and it was the cheap service! Prodigy, Compuserve, and especially GEnie were more expensive!). Leaving it connected overnight would get you grounded in a hurry when that AOL bill came in the next month. It was really no wonder that all of those services basically collapsed once dial up ISPs with flat (and low!) monthly fees started appearing. $10 for unlim…

> That idle timeout was pretty important when AOL cost $1/hour

Let me guess: are you American?

Brit here. Our phonecall connection charges were a lot more than that. The ROTW pays for local calls as well as long-distance. $1/hr would have been great. I paid closer to $1/min for dial-up. We all used OLRs: Offline Readers. An app that dials your service provider, posts all outgoing messages, grabs all new messages into a file, zips it, downloads it and any pending file downloads, then hangs up.

They were great and all message reading was local, hence fast: no lag at all, even on 14.4kb/s.

But CI$ ones were rubbish and AOL didn't have one at all, 'til it went toll-free in about 1998.

I am still liamproven@aol.com to this day.

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