The question facing AOL right now is: Can it get its brand right? Does it know what to do, and, just as importantly, does it know how to do it? Some believe it does. "Just imagine the power of the AOL brand once it gets every employee focused on the one big goal of building the world's biggest and most engaged audience based on brand utilitarianism," says Robb Hecht, adjunct marketing professor at Baruch College and owner of the blog Media 2.0, where he analyzes business branding issues. "AOL owns and operates [instant messaging service] ICQ. It owns and operates Mapquest, Netscape, Moviefone, Weblogs, Cityguide, and AOLmusic.com. And, now it has other non-AOL branded media properties such as In2TV, TMZ, and Engadget that are all hits. If AOL gets its brand right, AOL could re-establish itself as the 'go-to' social online media property it was originally destined to be."
"AOL is, in fact, re-focusing on community via its new AIM Pages and blogging platforms," Hecht explains. "In this way, AOL will truly re-enter the social networking business, a category the company actually invented."
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AOL Pop-Up Timeline
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But Frankel is among the experts who doubt the company can pull it all together. "AOL has no message. It could reinvent itself, but it won't," he says, noting that one big step toward correcting AOL's course would be for it to develop a strong brand strategy. "A good brand strategy is getting people to see you as the solution to their problems. You start to figure out what people want. Then you over-deliver so much that they can't live without you. But AOL has the worst marketing and advertising. Remember, it's not about what you want to sell, it's what they want to buy." In other words, if customers are not compelled to get their free e-mail through AOL, they won't.
In fact, according to Frankel, the 'free' movement within AOL is probably not enough to turn things around. "It smacks of a desperation move," Frankel says. "I'm guessing that they think 'If Yahoo can be totally ad supported, we can too.' AOL is just following the market, not leading it."
A better tactic would be for AOL to figure out what people want, determine what they can't get from competitors, and then deliver it, all the while exceeding expectations, says Frankel. But for any company, much less a behemoth, that's a tough row to hoe.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
