
How Much Did It Cost AOL To Send Us Those CDs In The 90s? “A Lot,”  - obilgic
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/aol-discs-90s/
======
jasonlbaptiste
I have this theory that AOL warez/hacking/prog scene is the root of many
startups that exist today. It's how I first learned to code by making punters.
I had made the first punter for AOL 4.0, only to have my hard drive crash the
day of release. This heavily demotivated me fyi.

A few buddies of mine got started here. I've also read Zuck used to mess
around in the scene. Aol was my first foray into the internet at the age of
ten or so (maybe younger?). My screen name was JediForce3 (Yup, i was a true
geek). I think it was Aol 2.5?

Anyone else here used to mess around with AOL back in the day? Steve Case used
to get a lot of crap, but I always respected him + looked up to him as the
founder of AOL.

~~~
bl4k
I found that AOL was nowhere near enough, wasn't 'true network' (I understood
this at 10), was heavily criticized by the PC media because of this (which I
also used to read) so I switched it off and discovered BBS's

The BBS's were the foundation of almost every person I have met in tech, every
job, all dev, every startup I have been involved with and there is a very
strong camaraderie amongst the early BBS hackers (most of us went on to become
v early web hackers).

So I see from how inside AOL you think your theory might hold, but outside of
it there was an entire larger network that was far more interesting

~~~
_delirium
I used both in the mid-90s, sort of on the tail end of the BBS scene, and
while I did generally like the BBS scene better culturally, I think I agree
with the previous comment that AOL got me more into programming. The fact that
people were trying to do so many things on AOL that it wasn't really intended
to support led to a whole cottage industry of teenagers writing scripts and
bots and whatnot, whereas my usage at least of BBSs was much more
straightforward and "normal" (I used them in the intended manner). I don't
think I ever really scripted anything in my terminal emulator, though perhaps
others did.

I ended up _really_ getting into programming a bit later via mIRC scripting,
though.

------
samratjp
So Quora has become the place for tech journalists to fish for the next
article, not that there's anything wrong with it :-)

(The Netflix postage cost question came up on Quora first, then you can guess
which tech publication (<http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/04/quora-netflix/>)
picked it up).

~~~
obilgic
Example:

[http://www.quora.com/User-Interfaces/Why-do-in-restaurant-
re...](http://www.quora.com/User-Interfaces/Why-do-in-restaurant-reservation-
and-ordering-systems-seem-to-have-such-bad-UI)

[http://www.juliansanchez.com/2010/12/27/why-are-
restaurant-w...](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2010/12/27/why-are-restaurant-
web-sites-so-bad/)

~~~
taylorbuley
Those are not the same topic (reservation systems vs. restaurant websites) but
there are indeed many, many examples out there.

------
qeorge
One thing I never understood:

My family has had an AOL account since v2.5 (1995?), but the discs never
stopped coming. Always seemed like an obvious waste of money, with a trivial
fix.

~~~
loire280
Satisfied customers can give their discs to friends and family. In fact,
sending discs to existing customers might be more effective, since a disc
given to you by someone you trust must have a significantly higher success
rate.

~~~
qeorge
Damn, that's a good point. Thanks, I've seriously been wondering about that
for > 10 years.

------
alain94040
The real question for me is, where did they get my home address? I don't care
so much about the cost for them of mailing the CDs, but what annoyed me more
was how they got my name and address.

Call them the first spammers of the digital age if you will.

~~~
wallflower
If you're curious, run a public record search on yourself. The ones that cost
money. It's all out there. From your mortgage outstanding (if you own) to your
rental history (if you rent - to a lesser degree if you find rentals through
Craigslist).

------
colinsidoti
With the effectiveness of online advertising declining, I wonder if we'll
start to see more physical promotions. Although, one could easily argue that
physical advertisements are no longer used because the internet exists as a
viable way to reach users.

On a somewhat unrelated note, the CD promo led to one of my favorite
commercials: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OqQYk2TC-8>

------
hardy263
We got so many of them that my friends and I started using them as frisbees.
Although the software was shoddy, the hardware provided some entertainment.

------
Tichy
Could the stunt be repeated today, using USB sticks perhaps?

~~~
Retric
Why not just send CD's?

~~~
wtallis
Everybody has a USB port. Not all laptops these days have optical drives.
Also, USB drives are a lot smaller, and can be just as thin (eg Crucial's
Gizmo Jr.:
[http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT8GBUFD...](http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT8GBUFDJNR000))

------
ck2
There is no way they spent $35 per CD, even including design printing, boxing,
mailing and the "free hours".

Wouldn't a better question be how much they saved per employee by outsourcing
nearly all their callcenter jobs? I would guess from $70 per person per day to
$70 per month. And yet they are still hemorrhaging.

~~~
zck
That's $35 _per acquired user_ , not per CD. So if you figure that the cds
cost a buck to make and ship, they acquired one user for every 35 CDs shipped.
That seems high, considering how many I had lying around.

~~~
tzs
The fact that some businesses will pay $35 per acquired user also explains how
some of those "free iPod" and similar offers worked. A typical one would
require you to essentially get 5 people to sign up for their clients in order
to earn your free iPod. If their clients were paying $35 per signup, that is
$175 for the "free iPod" company for every iPod they have to give out, so the
iPods aren't costing them net anywhere near as much as many would think at
first.

Also, it turns out it is a lot harder than people think to find 5 friends or
coworkers that you can convince to sign up for one of the offers. The company
still gets its $35 for each of the signups, without having to cough up an
iPod.

