Summary:

Jan Brandt is a legend in the world of marketing. She singlehandedly led the famous AOL "carpet-bombing" campaign that put millions of AOL trial discs and CDs in everything from magazines to popcorn boxes to banks. AOL was able to leap to the front of the online pack, over competitors like CompuServe and Prodigy largely on the success of this campaign. Jan tells us how this strategy developed, the thinking that went into it and goes into great detail about what worked and what didn't. But she was also a very early AOL executive, so she is able to give us some fantastic background about AOL the company: its culture, its people and its visionaries–people like Steve Case. She takes us from AOL's beginnings, through its considerable growing pains (remember "America On Hold?") its rise to dominance in the dot-com era, and even gives us her perspective on the legacy of the AOL/Time Warner merger.

What If I Told You…

… there was a crazy entrepreneur who was the true founder of what would become America Online? He was the guy who hired Steve Case back before AOL was AOL.

What if I told you that same entrepreneur invented true, networked, online gaming—not in the era of the Xbox 360, but back in the days of the Atari 2600?

What if I then told you that same entrepreneur invented a Napster/Pandora/Spotify/Sirius-like music service, all the way back in 1981, before the compact disc was even widely available?

That Man Is William von Meister

And he is the subject of this episode. I’ve enjoyed all of the episodes we’ve done so far, but I have to say this has been the most fun. It’s exciting to shed some light on a bit of history that I think has been criminally overlooked. And to be honest, it’s just such a crazy story, about a hard drinking, heavy-smoking, women-chasing entrepreneur, seemingly from the Mad Men cloth, who was “a pathological entrepreneur” with a “reality-distortion-field” that would give Steve Jobs a run for his money. It’s a story of about a dozen harebrained businesses, none of which were really successful (excepting of course that some or all of them lent their DNA to the company that would become AOL) but all of which were way ahead of their time, and in many ways, presaged technologies we take for granted today.

Details:

Some of the articles I mentioned about the GameLine System:

• Here
• Here
• and Here

Also, the books mentioned as source materials:

• Kara Swisher: aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web
• Michael A. Banks: On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders
• Alec, Klein: Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner

Also, this:

Summary:

America Online survives the inevitable run-in with Microsoft, only to come out the other side stronger.  The company has to endure major PR fiascos and network capacity issues, but eventually sees itself firmly established as one of the major players of the dot com era.

Bibliography:

•  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol.html?pg=6&topic=
•  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffaol.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set=
•  http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-04-14/the-online-world-of-steve-case
•  http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-08-25/has-the-net-finally-reached-the-wall
•  Swisher, Kara; AOL.com

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com

@brianmcc

@nethistorypod

Summary:

We take a step back to look at the early online services: CompuServe, Delphi, GEine, the WELL and especially, early AOL. Why? Well, because online services very much served as “training wheels” for the Internet. Online services were NOT the Internet, exactly; at least not at first. But they very much helped get people used to living life in an online environment. AOL especially would grow and enjoy success to the point that it became one of the most powerful companies in technology. We take a look at how America Online grew to dominate the online services market before the inevitable showdown with (who else?) Microsoft.

Bibliography:

•  Banks, Michael; On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders
•  http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/happy-30th-birthday-compuserve/24853
•  Stryker, Cole; Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan?s Army Conquered the Web
•  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/prodigy.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=
•  http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/08/business/at-age-9-prodigy-on-line-reboots.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
•  http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1995-02-12/prodigy-is-in-that-awkward-stage
•  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol.html?pg=4&topic=
•  http://www.quora.com/AOL-History/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s
•  Swisher, Kara; AOL.com