Mood at AOL Is Optimistic
America Online Chief Executive Jonathan F. Miller goes before the board of AOL's parent company, Time Warner Inc., tomorrow with an optimistic message aimed at persuading directors that the unit can be rehabilitated.
Highlighting how much has changed at the online division, Mr. Miller will outline plans to broaden AOL's audience and boost its ad sales by making its content more easily accessible to subscribers on the Web. More radically, AOL is also considering making some of AOL's content available free on the Internet.
Mr. Miller is likely to face a skeptical audience. After several quarters of weak advertising sales and a shrinking subscriber count, Time Warner is considering whether to keep the online division, sell it or combine it with a stronger Internet company. Possible buyers include Microsoft Corp. or Yahoo Inc.
Senior Time Warner executives want to make a decision on AOL's fate some time this year. And while some at the New York media company still are angry at the damage done to the venerable company by AOL's failed takeover, some executives worry that selling AOL now, while it is still out of favor, would fetch too low a price.
Despite a constant barrage of negative headlines during the past 18 months over AOL's accounting woes -- still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission -- and challenges to its business, the mood at AOL's Dulles headquarters is optimistic. Mr. Miller, appointed almost two years ago to turn around the business, has been focusing on cutting costs, updating the technology to be more advertiser-friendly and retooling its business to be more like that of its Internet rival, Yahoo.
"For a job that was essentially firefighting a while back, now it's more about pushing things for the upside," Mr. Miller said in an interview earlier this month.
In his presentation to the board, Mr. Miller is likely to focus on how AOL can maintain its profits even if its subscriber count continues to shrink. He believes that many people have become too focused on AOL's shrinking subscriber base -- which fell to 32 million world-wide from 35.2 million last year -- without noticing the strong growth potential of other parts of the business.
"The company has been underestimated because of the fears surrounding the AOL narrowband business," Mr. Miller said, referring to its standard dial-up service.
Although AOL still generates most of its profits from selling $23.90-a-month Internet accounts, Mr. Miller says that he has reduced the risk in that business by cutting telecommunications costs so the dial-up business can remain highly profitable even as its subscriber base declines.
Perhaps the most dramatic strategic change is AOL's decision to make some parts of its business more like Yahoo. A Wall Street darling, Yahoo has experienced sharp growth in revenue from online advertising and so-called premium services such as e-mail and personals.
To emulate this, AOL has thrown much of its old proprietary approach out the window. AOL was once known for its "walled garden" of content that could be accessed only by logging onto the online service. The walled-garden approach was enabled by AOL's homegrown technology, which isn't compatible with the rest of the Internet.
Now, AOL is in the midst of rebuilding its software so that it is compatible with the rest of the Internet. By this summer, it hopes to allow AOL subscribers to tap into much of its proprietary content -- such as Webcasts of baseball-game highlights and recipes from Time Inc. magazines -- from the Web site AOL.com. The company is even toying with the idea of making some of its content free, as Yahoo does. The idea is that some free content can be used to lure non-AOL subscribers to AOL, and to give AOL advertisers a larger audience.
Recently, the company tried out the "free content" approach when it Webcast a concert by the hit R&B artist Usher. AOL hopes such events will attract viewers that can be converted to become subscribers. "It's almost like a free HBO weekend," says Jim Bankoff, an AOL executive vice president.
With a larger audience and more advertiser-friendly technology, Mr. Miller says he hopes that AOL will finally begin to lure advertisers away from rivals such as Yahoo and Microsoft by next year. AOL also plans to license some of its proprietary entertainment content to third-party Web sites and could even sell some content directly to consumers as a stand-alone service.
AOL will take the anti-walled garden approach even further later this year when it releases a new version of its service for high-speed Internet, or broadband, subscribers. Until now, the broadband version of AOL has looked very similar to the dial-up version, with an entire computer screen bordered by AOL icons.
The new broadband version, code-named "Copeland," will look much less obtrusive. It is comprised of two elements -- a Web browser and a souped-up version of AOL Instant Messenger. The Web browser allows surfers to access AOL content, while the enhanced instant-message service includes access to e-mail, address book and other communications features.
美国在线对未来感到乐观
美国在线(America Online)首席执行长乔纳森?米勒(Jonathan F. Miller)将于明日在其母公司时代华纳公司(Time Warner Inc.)董事会面前述职。预计他将发表乐观的言论，以便使母公司的董事们确信美国在线有能力获得重生。
在强调该网络子公司的变化时，米勒将详述扩大其广告受众和提振广告销售的计划。这种提振主要通过使得订户在网上更为方便地获得其内容来实现。更为激进的是，美国在线正考虑在互联网上免费发布部分内容。
米勒可能将面临怀疑的目光。在广告销售和订户数量连续几个季度萎缩之后，时代华纳正在考虑是继续维持该子公司、出售该子公司还是将其和另一家更好的互联网公司合并。可能的买家包括微软公司(Microsoft Corp.)和雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)。
时代华纳的高级管理人士希望在今年的某个时间就美国在线的命运作出决定。尽管时代华纳部分管理人士依旧为对美国在线失败的收购给时代华纳所造成的伤害恼怒不已，但部分管理人士担心，现在出售美国在线的价格可能太低，尽管出售的想法现在还不是董事会的首选。
尽管过去18个月内，就美国在线的会计错误连续出现负面消息，目前美国证券交易委员会(Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC)还在对此进行调查，且公司业务面临挑战，但美国在线总部内的人气非常乐观。两年前接受任命的Miller一直将注意力集中于削减成本、将技术向更为有利于广告商的方向升级及把业务向更类似于其竞争对手雅虎的方向转型。
在米勒向董事会所作的报告中，他可能将把焦点集中于美国在线如何在订户数量继续萎缩的前提下保持利润。他相信，很多人过于关注美国在线订户数量的萎缩，并未注意到其他业务的强劲增长潜力。美国在线的全球订户数量从去年的3,520万降至3,200万。
米勒在谈及标准的拨号上网服务时表示，由于围绕在美国在线窄带业务的担忧情绪作祟，公司利润一直被低估。 虽然美国在线的大部分利润依旧来自于出售月费23.90美元的互联网帐户，但米勒表示，通过削减电信成本，他已经将该业务的风险减小，因此，拨号业务的盈利性依旧很高，即使其订户减少。
可能美国在线最为戏剧性的战略变化是其决定将部分业务向类似于雅虎的方向转变。作为华尔街的宠儿，雅虎的在线广告和诸如电子邮件及个人服务之类的额外服务的收入出现大幅增长。
为了仿效这种成功，美国在线将其旧有的盈利模式抛于脑后。以前，美国在线以高墙深院保护内容而出名，这些内容只有注册其网络服务后才能获得。这种方法是由美国在线自有技术支持的，而该技术和互联网其他技术互不兼容。
现在，美国在线正对其软件进行重新设计，以便其和互联网其他技术兼容。美国在线希望，到今年夏季，其订户就可以在其网站AOL.com上获得大部分自己的内容。公司甚至正在考虑仿效雅虎将部分内容免费。公司认为，部分免费内容能够吸引非美国在线订户转而投奔美国在线，并使得公司的广告商的受众群体扩大。
随著广告受众群体的扩大，及采用更为有利于广告商的技术，米勒表示，他希望美国在线在明年之前最终将把广告商从诸如雅虎和微软的竞争对手那吸引过来。美国在线还计划将部分娱乐内容授权给第三方网站，甚至可能作为一项单独服务，将部分内容直接出售给消费者。 美国在线今年晚些时候将推出高速互联网订户服务的新版本，即使这样，其仍将进一步推行推倒围墙的策略。到目前为止，美国在线的宽频服务和拨号服务看起来非常类似。
