Does any one beleive that AOL's ownership and continual development of the
Miribilis ICQ communication
system will eventually lead to 1) Much more than just a walled city in terms
of mass communication between
individuals from many ISP's (chat etc ) and 2) will the established and
still growing market dominance that ICQ
has in terms of this type of comunication system, allow AOL to differentiate
their product / product offering, more
than competitors such as bigpond and ozemail? ( eg. if ICQ was turned into a
pay for use service, unless you are
a user of AOL as in ISP??)
chris the uni student.
>
>Roger asked:
>>>Is there *anything* of substance in AOL's claims to be different? ...
>
>Tom replied:
>>Yes, they do try to promote discussion groups for users. ...
>
>Wow.
>
>I guess that means that newsgroups, e-lists, IRC and web-chat have just
>passed into history, made irrelevant by the demonstrably more pleasant
>walled city of AOL (where A stands for whatever you want it to).
>
>
>Everything Ramin, Tom and Stewart have said confirms the impression in my
>mind that the difference is in image not substance. Yes, I acknowledge
>that this may be precisely what the market of 'newbies' will buy. Yes, I'm
>still hopeful that even this market may be sceptical.
>
>On the subject of nationalism, Ramin, I wasn't *really* attacking AOL just
>because the A originally stood for America (although of course my
>anti-American-culture biases are pretty difficult to entirely suppress
>...). I agree that the market will mature to be trans-national or
>supra-national. And I don't think I've ever been caught defending Telstra
>or Ozemail (in fact, I declined to sign up with ANU's chosen ISP, Ozemail,
>because of the extremely consumer-unfriendly terms and the excessive
>pricing. When I'm interstate and need my mail, I dial in to my Canberra
>ISP by STD, and end up well in front financially).
>
>
>
>Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
> http://www.etc.com.au/Xamax/
>Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
>Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916 mailto:Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au
>
>Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
>The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA
>Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 2 6249 3666
>
>
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