Looks like folks are fleeing AOL in increasing numbers these days as the company as announced it will cut 700 jobs in December amounting to 5% of their U.S. workforce just in time for Christmas. As of the end of the second quarter this year AOL lost over 2 million members since the same period last year and over 668,000 since the first quarter of this year. Ouch.
AOL, a unit of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., has lost millions of subscribers to lower-cost rivals and higher-speed cable and telephone Internet services over the past few years.
In order to meet double-digit profit growth goals, AOL has trimmed its network costs over the past two years in the face of no revenue growth.
The source said most of the job cuts would be made at AOL’s Dulles, Virginia, headquarters.
About 5,000 of AOL’s 13,000 U.S. employees are based at Dulles. AOL cut 850 jobs in 2003.
There was a time when I would have taken glee over AOL’s troubles, but the company has become less of an annoyance these days and I really hate to see folks lose their jobs during the holidays. This explains the sudden influx of AOL CD-ROMS I’ve gotten recently advocating 4 billion free hours if I’ll just, pretty-please, try their better internet cause they make it better cause they love me.
Posted on 11/04/2004 at 09:35 AM 
Well, this explains all of the AOL adds that have been all over the TV lately.
From a business point of view, I understand why they “downsize” at the end of the year. But GEEZ, employees are no longer human to them.. They don’t care what they are doing to the lives of these people. Businesses wonder why employees do not have company loyalty. Its because company’s no longer give a shit about their employees. Its really sad.