Steve Case
Steve Case
Stephen McConnell "Steve" Caseis an American entrepreneur, investor, and businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online. Since his retirement as chairman of AOL Time Warner in 2003, he has gone on to invest in early and growth-stage startups through his Washington, D.C. based venture capital firm Revolution LLC...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth21 August 1958
CityHonolulu, HI
CountryUnited States of America
And so the idea was, well maybe you can take an Atari video game machine, where people plug in a game cartridge, and plug in a modem, and tie that into a telephone, and essentially turn that game in the machine into an interactive terminal.
And what we did with this new company in 1985 is we did start focusing on PCs instead of video game machines, because we learned the hard lesson about bringing a product to market in a consumer world where it's very expensive to build a brand and get distribution and so forth.
Most of the people who had PCs did not have modems and could not use those PCs as communicating devices. They really were using them for spreadsheets or word processing or storing recipes or playing games or what have you.
We went from one million to 20 million subscribers in the past five years. That's great, but a billion people watch CNN.
We do not intend to limit content diversity on any of our systems. If we limit content, if we do not promote a diversity of voices ... then consumers will waste no time migrating to other Internet and media services.
Couple that with their distribution (OS) muscle, then Netscape clearly has an uphill battle.
And when I was 24, I think, I moved to Washington, D.C., and started focusing on interactive services, and that's really what I then did for 20 years.
Our expanding membership and surging usage confirm that consumers want the content, services, features and ease of use that are uniquely AOL,
We don't want to suddenly mess around with people's normal viewing habits and force them to do interactive things. Above all, we want to expand the viewer's experience, either through a very simple directory or by providing additional information to the program that's currently showing.
We don't want to turn the TV into a computer.
There's no question that we're on the eve of an explosion in consumers' move to wireless and how they use interactive devices.
We've learned the market functions a little differently in Europe.
I strongly believe that AOL - once the leading Internet company in the world - can return to its past greatness. Over the past few months, I have been pleased to see a renewed focus on AOL at Time Warner, and the emergence of so many strategic alternatives.
When I saw it, I really thought it could be more of a lifestyle brand, much like Nike.