AOL just can't seem to stop losing members, eh, adjusting its subscriber counts, that is. This week, the company said that it is no longer counting as subscribers 21%, or 170,000 nonpaying customers
in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. As you may remember, the Securities and Exchange Commission just last week launched a probe into whether America Online has been improperly inflating its domestic
subscriber numbers.
According to an article in the Washington Post today, these customers, which were to date counted in quarterly disclosures of subscriber figures, "include individuals who
participated in free trials and continued to use the service without paying; tens of thousands of customers of a Brazilian bank who had been given temporary accounts free but never agreed to pay;
users with dormant accounts; and others who failed to properly sign up for the service."
America Online Latin America and America Online are continuing to count as subscribers an undisclosed number
of people who are participating in free trials.
AOL Latin America lost about $61 million in the first half of this year. The losses reflect the discontinuation of a failed joint-marketing program
with Brazilian banking concern Banco Itau, which gave away a co-branded online service to bank customers who AOLA had hoped would later begin paying for the service.
What's more, according to
company officials, America Online is abandoning its strategy of making major changes to its AOL software as part of a single annual release in favor of rolling out fresh upgrades as soon as the new
features are ready, The Washington Post reported in today's edition, citing sources who say that by offering a steady stream of new improvements, AOL hopes to keep their subscribers interested in the
service and around longer.
For their sake, I hope this new approach is more effective than some of their previous undertakings.