Word: aol
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fond, for instance, of telling the story of the time when, as CEO of Six Flags, he spent time working as a street sweeper in pursuit of a broom's-eye-view of its New Jersey theme park. Pittman has an intense charm that makes him a natural for AOL's dichotomous culture, where V.P.s brag alternately about late nights and mountain-biking exploits. "I've spent my whole life building brands," he says. "And we're focusing more on brand building than others. My experience tells me that's a good thing." He talks in a soft, deliberate voice...
What makes these riches especially sweet is that Case has come close to wrecking his magical money machine. The self-demolition derby started last fall, when AOL's strained network backed up like a kitchen sink. New York City users were calling access numbers in places as far away as Alaska before getting through. In December, when AOL changed its pricing structure to allow for unlimited access at a flat rate, the mess worsened, and customers screamed. Attorneys general threatened to sue AOL for promising service it couldn't deliver. Wall Street analysts argued that this was the sort...
...mention a couple of hundred million dollars. In the past six months, AOL has learned the hard way about the fixed costs associated with building an empire. In the lot next to its Dulles headquarters, the company is erecting a $50 million network facility, on top of $300 million spent adding modems from Florida to Alaska. "We're building the equivalent of a Prodigy every month," says Mike Connors, AOL's president of technology...
Members still complain of being shut out during busy times. Yet the slowing of AOL's once brisk cancellation rate and the acceleration of new arrivals seem to show that Case is at least one step ahead of the complaints. "These guys flirted with disaster," says Daniel Hart, a new-media strategist at Viacom. "Fortunately, they were smart enough to pull...
Successful as AOL has been, Case knows that his company could still end up being the RC Cola of the Net rather than the Coca-Cola. With the Web spilling onto platforms as diverse as TV sets and cell phones, Case sees that his business may be preparing for another big shift. "Even though we've been at it for a decade, this is like the second inning in terms of the development of this medium." The online business, he says, is about to become "the most competitive market in the world...