AOL Speak

By Roy D. Follendore III

This just in....

Dateline: January 13, 2003

As many of you may now know, Steve Case announced he was stepping down as the Chairman of the Board of AOL/TimeWarner in May. It is certain that the AOL/TW stockholders and employees will certainly miss his brilliant smile, and his always positive attitude, along with his leadership in advanced "mom and pop" Internet CD technology and with "Honest to God this time it is true" creative accounting practices.

Although the message Steve delivered was better written, the following was decoded from by an AOL political pundent.

Coded

"Given that some shareholders continue to focus their disappointment with the company's post-merger performance on me personally, I have concluded that we should take steps now to avoid the possibility of that effort hindering our ability to pull together as a team and focus fully on our businesses."

Decoded

Given that ~~some~~ ALL of our ~~shareholders~~ SHAREHOLDERS AND USERS continue to focus their ~~disappointment~~ BITTERNESS, ANGER, DESPAIR with the company's post-merger ~~performance~~ SELF-DESTRUCTION on me POOR LITTLE ME, I have concluded that I AM SO RICH NOW I DON'T NEED TO TAKE THIS (uncodeable...) CRAP ANYMORE. SO ALL OF YOU we AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON should take ~~steps~~ A FLYING LEAP now to avoid the possibility of that ~~effort hindering our~~ I MIGHT EMBARRASS YOUR ability to pull OUT OF THIS POLITICAL MESS I CREATED t~~ogether~~ as a PART OF THE SCREWED UP EXECUTIVE ACCOUNTING team and focus fully on YOUR OWN businesses RATHER THAN ON THE REAL ISSUE OF ALL OF THE MONEY AOL HAS SUCKED OUT OF THE TIME WARNER DEAL.

Note the amazing degree of compression that AOL Speak provides to executive messages.

So much for satire. With all due respect to Steve Case, it is understandable that he would have wanted to stay out of the spotlight and allow other Chairmen to take over. The problem is that he forgot where the value of his company came from. In case you read this it was TECHNOLOGY Steve. Technology gave AOL the ability to reach the billions and it was that capability that was the reason for their merger. If you look closely AOL will find that somewhere along the line the AOL management became loaded down with bean counter MBA management with no experience or background in technology. It is the slick talking idiots that think of technology as a template to success. Their formula is that if one is a success, then ten times the same thing is better. Why do anything different? It then becomes impossible for new technology to compete for budgets. As a consequence, AOL has not been doing anything new, they have just been getting bigger and filling up landfills with billions of plastic CD disks.

For all of you investors out there, now that Steve Case is leaving you may naturally expect AOL/TW stock to start to go up. Perhaps you should hold on to your horses until AOL actually decides to do something more with their technology strategies as well as their marketing strategies. After all, media delivery to the public was the only reason why Time Warner wanted to merge. The trouble has always been that nothing spectacular really ever happened. The situation has been like a firecracker that fizzled, so that the next Chairman will have to get up close and check the fuse to see if it is still glowing. This time the fuse is short and if anything is going to happen it will need to happen pretty fast. Check into the stock prices about July 2003. AOL fluctuation of stock prices before then will just be speculation.

One last thing... It is a mistake to ignore that the second expansion of Internet technology is on the way. The foolish idea that the Internet boom was only about technology is crazy. The Internet boom was always about the expansion of the global society through technology. That is where value is created. There is no doubt that AOLTW has the mass and capacity to deliver a massive spark to the Internet. The question is whether that spark will take place under conditions that are conducive or in a war time recession. If it is the former then the economy will once again begin to dramatically expand. If it is in the later then expansion might not take place until after the next Presidential elections.

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