Time for Olde Tyme Techcitement, where we take a look back at technology relics. It’s basically your grampa talking about the good old days, but sooner and totally more reasonable than dumb boring stories about how all this used to be farmland.
Remember the days of the early internet when you could pretty much count on getting another stupid AOL CD in the mail a couple times a week? They must have filled a dozen landfills with the things, but the long-term blitz seemed to work. The company quickly became the big dog in the online access world in the late-1990s.
Here’s a video from AOL’s glory days. It’s a fascinating peek into the world of the late 1990s, as everyone tried to figure out what this new communication medium meant for the way Americans live.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXdxeYUqSGU’]
(This video was included with the woefully outdated text for a Marketing class I took earlier this year. They didn’t show the video as an example of how things were in the booming 1990s, but as an example of current trends. Oy.)
You have to hand it to these AOL executives. They came in as the internet was starting to boom, rode the wave, and then unashamedly crowed to the world how awesome they were for creating the wave.
I wouldn’t suggest that Steve Case, Myer Berlow, and Wendy Brown had nothing to do with shaping internet usage, of course. Rather, I’d say they made some common sense reactions to the way their customers defied their expectations in order to maximize the company’s market share as the paradigm shifted. (Did I mention that I took a class on this?)
Either way, fun video. I can’t help but think that Wendy Brown (whatever happened to her?) regretted wearing that red suit, though. I bet she shopped for it on AOL.
I used AIM all through middle and high school, though the only time I used AOL itself was if I was at a friend’s house and that’s what they used. I liked getting the discs in the mail. I’d reformat the floppies and use them for my own stuff (yay! Free discs!) and would use the cd’s for projects, as coasters, or as target practice for BB guns.