Anne Holland

AOL Putting People & Ent Weekly Behind Paid Barrier

December 16th, 2002

As reported in Media Life Magazine and elsewhere today, Business 2.0’s President Ned Desmond is now also Exec Editor Time Inc.
Interactive where he’ll be in charge of putting content from People Magazine and Entertainment Weekly behind the AOL paid-only wall. AOL hopes this content will encourage non AOL users pay for access even if they rely on another ISP for Internet access. DSL and cable-modem users are specifically targeted.

Which is a great idea, except for the branding. In general people who don’t use AOL are kinda snooty about those who do. To sell content to this I’m-smarter-than-AOL-Net-Dummies demographic, the brand is gonna kill you. If, however, AOL simply hopes to stem current account losses to cheaper or faster ISPs, then this move might help a bit for the time being.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2002/dec02/dec16/1_mon/news1monday.html

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