“Adult” is one of those perfectly good words that cautious people handle with tongs. Once used only to describe hard-won maturity, it’s also come to symbolize the kind of sordid amusements immortalized in the Starr report.
So give America Online Inc. credit for boldness as they roll out a new Internet service frankly targeted at adult consumers.
Did I say new? Not really. In fact, we’re talking about CompuServe.
Just a year ago, AOL completed its acquisition of CompuServe, the one-time leader in on-line services. To old-time CompuServers like me, it was a somber event. While AOL served up family-friendly fluff for the clueless, CompuServe made its name as the on-line service for people who knew what they were doing. Its 500 special-interest forums were the place to go for sophisticated discussions on computers or nearly anything else. Seeing AOL devour CompuServe would be like watching People magazine buy The New Yorker.
There was talk that AOL would make like the Borg, totally assimilating CompuServe into the grand collective. Happily, AOL is far too clever for that. CompuServe is a valuable brand name, and the company is moving to make the most of it, with new software and a shift in marketing focus from geeks to grownups.
AOL blundered in naming the new service CompuServe 2000. Adding those four digits to a product name makes it sound instantly out-of-date, like Microsoft’s Windows 2000, which has a taint of obsolescence even though it hasn’t gone on sale yet.
But beneath the name, there’s an upgraded version of good old CompuServe. The new software completes work that CompuServe began years ago, converting the system to HTML, the coding method used to design Web pages. Everything in the new CompuServe appears inside a Microsoft Web browser that’s part of the software.
This method is actually a bit less powerful than the old software. For instance, you can no longer download dozens of forum messages at a time, then read them after you’ve logged off. Also, some features remain lamentably clunky. The old CompuServe featured the world’s worst software for reading Usenet bulletin board messages. The new version uses AOL’s Usenet software, which is merely the second-worst.
And here’s a geek tragedy for you: no more Telnet access. Telnet’s a program that lets you talk to other computers using a plain-vanilla text-only display. Gearheads loved CompuServe because it was the only on-line service that would let you Telnet in from any computer on the Internet. You can still get e-mail that way, but not other CompuServe features.
CompuServe chief operating officer Audrey Weil says her firm can’t count on techies for survival. Most of them will bypass the on-line services altogether and head straight for the Internet. Instead, CompuServe 2000 is targeting serious, mature, but non-technical computer users.
“We look at 17 million people coming on to the Internet for the first time in 1999, and more than half of those are adults,” Weil says. “This service is targeted at busy adults.”
It’s even priced that way–$9.95 a month for 20 hours. Weil says the typical CompuServe user isn’t like the AOLers who live on-line. They’ll want to log on, find what they need, and log off. So they shouldn’t have to pay for “unlimited” access they’ll never use.
Weil’s on to something here. I pay $14.90 a month for CompuServe, yet I find myself using it less and less–just nine minutes in January, my bill says. The new pricing would save me almost $60 a year, without interfering with my CompuServe habits.
And even though I use the service less frequently, I’d hate to give it up. CompuServe is still one of the best places to find reliable data and intelligent discourse. Indeed, that’s a vital part of AOL’s business plan.
Weil says CompuServers are an affluent, educated bunch, and 80 percent of them buy things on-line. So even though CompuServe’s audience of 2 million is far smaller than AOL’s 16 million, the CompuServe audience is especially attractive to advertisers, who’ll pay lavishly to entice us.
The on-line porn merchants like to claim that catering to adults is the best way to find profit on the Internet. For once, I hope they’re right.
