Post your comment on this story. Whether it's wireless spectrum or broadband cable, the cellular telephone or digital television, AOL's goal is to make interactivity pervasive - an initiative that the company calls AOL Anywhere. But, if you had to pick one, it is the notion of making the promise of AOL Anywhere a reality. Already, the company has inked deals with the likes of Philips Electronics and Gemstar, advancing its efforts to develop a TV-based access device. Schuler sees today's interactive market as the equivalent of a giant funnel leading users to buy increasingly ubiquitous and integrated services.
Subscribers coming in the top of the funnel traditionally start out using PC-based online services.
As those individuals begin using e-mail accounts, stock portfolios and instant messaging lists, they develop an appetite to access that information via other more expensive but more accessible devices, such as televisions and handheld computers. It will be easier to convert an AOL subscriber to a related AOL add-on service than it will be to sell users on an entirely new interface delivered via an entirely new information service, Case said. We think that is unlikely. If Case is right, that means existing customer relationships will be critically important to companies seeking to sell add-on Web offerings, ranging from online calendars to communications services, to consumers. If we respect the relationship, it creates the same kind of hold that you have through a bottleneck, but it's one where you get held to a much higher standard.