AOL Jack Davies National Press Club Address

[Tom Worthington]

At 14:40 8/10/98 +1000, Roger Clarke wrote:

>Tom wrote:
>>Some comments from here at the National Press Club. Mr. Jack Davies,
>>president of America On-line International ...
>
>Can someone explain to me why 'just another corporate' is being given such
>a dream run by the media ...

Some thoughts as to why AOL is getting a dream run in the media:

* They have a very well thought out message. As a result it is easy for the
media to understand what they are saying and report on it.
* They are a large and successful company, so their arrival is worthy of
media attention.
* They are putting a lot of resources into the launch. Having the overseas
boss of the company here, with plenty of PR people to facilitate, makes for
a ready-made media event.

>... including the exposure and implied endorsement of the
> National Press Club?

Some dubious characters have given National Press Club addresses, including
me. ;-)   http://www.acs.org.au/president/1996/epubs/npctw.htm

>The public relations machine of *any* decent-sized corporate can dream up
>ways of leveraging off ideas in good standing like 'community' ...

I found the AOL message a lot more palatable that from MSN. The MSN approach
was a broadcasting model, where they would buy Australian content to push at
consumers.

Come to think of it, AOL are supposed to have done some sort of deal with
the ABC for on-line content. The ABC recorded the address for broadcast. Is
this a conflict of interest?

>Is there *anything* of substance in AOL's claims to be different? ...

Yes, they do try to promote discussion groups for users. The down-side to
this as one questioner pointed out at the launch, is that AOL's chat rooms
are only available to AOL subscribers. This creates the on-line equivalent
to a gated community: it is nice and safe inside, because most of the world
is locked out.


Tom Worthington	           http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw   PO Box 13
Immediate Past President                            Belconnen ACT 2617
Australian Computer Society                        tomw@acslink.net.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------
IO98, 7 Nov, Canberra: http://www.acs.org.au/president/1998/past/io98/