I don't see how AOL did anything wrong here. They offered a free service that millions enjoyed, and when it came time to close it down, they notified users using the email addresses the users had given them.
It's not AOL's fault if people didn't keep their contact information up to date, and two weeks is ample notice.
What could they really have done differently, save not closing the service or never offering it in the first place?
1. Make it read-only and keep around for 3 months. It's not like hosting a static site costs a lot of money these days.
2. Take the site down for a month and bring it back online for one final month. This should get everyone's attention.
Above and beyond all, they could actually start caring about the impact they make on people. When driving down the road I slow down to avoid splashing pedestrians with water - they never paid aything to me and it slows me down, yet I try to be conscious of the impact I could make.
It's true: People don't keep their contact information up to date, don't make backups (or do so infrequently), and don't always read (or act on) that super important e-mail until too late. To me, that's precisely what makes AOL's actions inexcusable. These are predictable, human faults. If some users are stupid/lazy/inattentive, then AOL needs to deal with that fact. Acknowledging reality doesn't excuse you from dealing with it!
And dealing with it doesn't seem that hard or expensive. It will take some effort (== money), but this can be made up for by happy users, placing ads on shutdown messages, and/or other means.
1. Give users more time to export their data and send reminders for any users that have not exported their data about the impending shutdown.
2. On the date of the shutdown, replace the public side of the sites with a message about the service's discontinuation.
3. After the date of the shutdown, retain the ability for site owners to login. When site owners login, just send them the export of their content. Leave the service in this "export-only" state for at least another month.
4. Continue to send reminders for anyone who still has not availed themselves of the opportunity to export their data.
5. Finally, cut a full backup of user content and shutdown the hardware. Replace the whole site with a message telling site owners to contact customer service if they need their data. Customer service can explain that the data is still available, but will take time to recover from backups. Keep a queue of the stragglers, and every two weeks or so, spend a little time to recover data for these users.
It's not AOL's fault if people didn't keep their contact information up to date, and two weeks is ample notice.
What could they really have done differently, save not closing the service or never offering it in the first place?