AOL Dumps Pop-Up Ads With Update

A rock star, a comedian, a trio of AOL Time Warner's top suits, and a swarm of enthusiastic AOL staff and users were the ingredients for AOL's Tuesday launch of the new 8.0 version of the nation's most popular ISP.

Within hours of its release, AOL 8.0 was downloaded 1.7 million times, America Online Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jon Miller said during AOL's raucous launch celebration at Manhattan's Lincoln Center. He also announced a new policy: AOL will no longer accept third-party pop-up ads. The change comes in response to user feedback, and is intended as a mark of AOL's "back to basics" return to focusing on its customers, he said.

"Pop-up ads aren't the way we're going to go," he said, adding the caveat that AOL will continue to run pop-ups and alerts to advertise its own features and services.

Famous Faces

Actor Dana Carvey, best known for his years on "Saturday Night Live" and spin-off movie "Wayne's World," emceed the two-hour event, which featured Warner Bros. artists Alanis Morissette and Laura Pausini and a preview clip from the studio's upcoming "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

AOLTW Chief Executive Officer Richard Parsons spoke briefly, while AOLTW Chairman Steve Case shared the stage and swapped jokes with Carvey throughout much of the event. Miller, Case, and Parsons all heralded the virtues of AOL 8.0 and emphasized the company's renewed focused on responding to customer needs.

"This is a celebration today to symbolically represent a return to focus on the members," Persons said. "Sometimes success can be its own undoing. You keep chasing new things."

New Tools

New features include "MatchChat," which lets users locate real-time discussions in their areas of interests, and a host of new e-mail functions including categorization capabilities.

One AOL user attending the event said she isn't particularly clamoring for the new features in AOL 8.0.

Pam Schleifer and her husband, Peter, came from Brooklyn for the event--mostly for the freebies, according to Ms. Schleifer. The couple has been using AOL for more than 10 years, but hasn't been upgrading steadily. One of their PCs is now running AOL 6.0; the other is still on AOL 4.0.

"[The version] just doesn't really matter," Ms. Scheifer said.

She said she'll probably upgrade to AOL 8.0 eventually. Meanwhile, they're waiting to hear more about the new version's features before deciding if any are compelling enough to prompt an upgrade, according to Mr. Schleifer.

Another attendee said she'll be upgrading right away as part of her volunteer position as a community leader in AOL's Help forum.

Laura Vernace, of Roselle Park, New Jersey, said she's been an AOL subscriber for eight years and a community leader for five. For her, the highlight of Tuesday's event was meeting Case.

"It's great to actually meet him in person," she said. "He said, 'Oh, thank you.' So that was nice."

Microsoft's Moves

One surprise attendee at the launch was Ted Turner, who according to press reports was among the AOLTW directors pressing for Case's ouster at a board meeting last month. Turner made a fleeting appearance alongside Parsons, cheering for the new AOL and proclaiming, "Watch out, Bill Gates and Microsoft, here we come!"

Microsoft has a sizeable war chest ready to respond to AOL's onslaught: On Monday, it launched a $300 million advertising campaign to herald its forthcoming MSN 8.0 Internet access software. MSN, which claims 9 million subscribers, distantly trails AOL, which reports 35 million.

Next week, Microsoft will hold its own New York launch celebration, in Central Park. It too has enlisted a rock star--Lenny Kravitz--to send its 8.0 upgrade out in noisy style.