Steve Case's stepping down certainly has the feel of an "end of an era," although, I'm thinking it's much more a creation of big media (who can't stop falling all over themsleves with a bunch of "See, I told you so" stories) than the actual end of an actual era. We're seeing a lot of "First Bertelsmann, then Vivendi, then AOL/TW" stories that are going by the old media dictum that three of anything is a confirmed trend and, as usual, the real analysis is going on in blogs across the net.
Given all that has happened in the last seven years (boom to bust), I'm still reminded of my experience at Columbia while in my first semester of the MBA program. It was 1994 and all first semester students have to break into study groups and choose a single public company to focus on for a semester-long project. This involves analyzing the company and creating a series of term papers that looks at your target company from the standpoint of each of the basic core curriculum courses (finance, marketing, accounting, etc.).
Our group got together and I campaigned hard for us to choose AOL, which I believe, had only been public for a year or two at that point. I remember reading through the Annual Report and seeing the Chairman's letter from Case that stated in no uncertain terms that he believed AOL would eventually take it's place alongside other major media as a leading consumer product.
"What is he talking about?" said my study group-mates. "This guy is crazy. People are going to hook up their computers to connect to this thing instead of watching TV?" They didn't get it. It wasn't about consuming media and it still isn't. It's about connecting with other people -- their ideas, their creations, their lives. AOL got that early on, but like a lot of companies was sidetracked by the boom and wound up believing the future was in extorting millions from newly public companies that really couldn't afford it.
In any event, I admire what Case put together and you have to admit, he was passionate and focused enought to make his vision a reality. In the long run, I agree with those that are saying he actually did well by AOL's shareholders, because without the TimeWarner deal, AOL stock would be crushed by now.
Oh, and by the way....I was overuled and our study group wound up doing Gateway. Hmmm.......
