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AOL
AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online service known as PlayNET. PlayNET licensed its software to Quantum Link (Q-Link), which went online in November 1985. A new IBM PC client was launched in 1988, and eventually renamed as America Online in 1989. AOL grew to become the largest online service, displacing established players like CompuServe and The Source. By 1995, AOL had about three million active users. AOL was at one point the most recognized brand on the Web in the United States. AOL once provided a dial-up Internet service to millions of Americans and pioneered instant messaging and chat rooms with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). In 1998, AOL purchased Netscape for US$4.2 billion. By 2000, AOL was providing internet service to over 20 million consumers, dominating t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AIM (software)
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence information computer program created by AOL. It used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow users to communicate in real time. AIM was popular by the late 1990s; teens and college students were known to use the messenger's away message feature to keep in touch with friends, often frequently changing their away message throughout a day or leaving a message up with one's computer left on to inform buddies of their ongoings, location, parties, thoughts, or jokes. AIM's popularity declined as AOL subscribers started decreasing and steeply towards the 2010s, as Gmail's Google Talk, SMS, and Internet social networks, like Facebook gained popularity. Its fall has often been compared with other once-popular Internet services, such as Myspace. In June 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications. In June 2017, Verizon combined AOL and Yahoo into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Armstrong (executive)
Timothy M. Armstrong (born December 21, 1970) is an American business executive. He was formerly the Chief executive officer, CEO of Oath Inc., then a subsidiary of Verizon Communications that served as the umbrella company of its digital content subdivisions, including AOL and Yahoo!. Previously, he was the CEO of AOL Inc. from 2009 until its purchase by Verizon in 2015. Armstrong began his career in journalism, becoming known for his online advertising sales in the 1990s. He was appointed marketing director for Seattle-based online entertainment-and-news portal Starwave, which was acquired by The Walt Disney Company, Disney in 1998. He was vice-president of sales at the New York City, New York-based news-and-gaming company Snowball in 2000. He became Vice President for Advertising Sales at Google, and later became President of Google Americas operations. He replaced the outgoing Randy Falco as CEO of AOL in 2009. Education and early life Between 1989 and 1993, Armstrong studie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WarnerMedia
Warner Media, LLC (Trade name, doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational corporation, multinational mass media and show business, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City. It was established as Time Warner in 1990 and was known by that name for most of its history, following a merger between Time Inc. and Warner Communications. The company had film, television and cable television, cable operations. Its assets included WarnerMedia Studios & Networks (which consisted of the entertainment assets of Turner Broadcasting System, Turner Broadcasting, HBO, and Cinemax as well as Warner Bros., which itself consisted of the film, animation, television studios, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the company's home entertainment division and Studio Distribution Services, its joint venture with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, DC Comics, New Line Cinema, and, together with CBS ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time Warner
Warner Media, LLC ( doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City. It was established as Time Warner in 1990 and was known by that name for most of its history, following a merger between Time Inc. and Warner Communications. The company had film, television and cable operations. Its assets included WarnerMedia Studios & Networks (which consisted of the entertainment assets of Turner Broadcasting, HBO, and Cinemax as well as Warner Bros., which itself consisted of the film, animation, television studios, the company's home entertainment division and Studio Distribution Services, its joint venture with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, DC Comics, New Line Cinema, and, together with CBS Entertainment Group, a 50% interest in The CW); WarnerMedia News & Sports (consisted of the news and sports assets of Turner Broadcasting, incl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A founding engineer of Netscape, Lou Montulli, created HTTP cookies. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over. Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CompuServe
CompuServe, Inc. (CompuServe Information Service, Inc., also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi) was an American Internet company that provided the first major commercial online service provider, online service. It opened in 1969 as a timesharing and Terminal emulation, remote access service marketed to corporations. After a successful 1979 venture selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system was opened to the public, roughly the same time as The Source (online service), The Source. H&R Block bought the company in 1980 and began to advertise the service aggressively. CompuServe dominated the industry during the 1980s, buying their competitor The Source. One popular use of CompuServe during the 1980s was file exchange, particularly pictures. In 1985, it hosted one of the earliest online comics, ''Witches and Stitches''. CompuServe introduced a simple black-and-white image format known as RLE (run-length encoding) to standardize the im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Case
Stephen McConnell Case (born August 21, 1958) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist best known as the former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online (AOL). Case joined AOL's predecessor company, Quantum Computer Services, as a marketing vice-president in 1985, became CEO of the company (renamed AOL) in 1991, and, at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, orchestrated with Gerald M. Levin the merger that created AOL Time Warner, described as "the biggest train wreck in the history of corporate America." Since resigning as chairman of the company in 2003, he has launched a venture-capital firm, Revolution LLC, based in Washington, D.C., and authored ''The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future'', which in 2016 became a ''New York Times'' bestselling book. In 2022 he published his second book, ''The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream''. Life and career Steve Case was b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involving simple text message exchanges, modern IM applications and services (also called "social messengers", "messaging apps", "chat apps" or "chat clients") tend to also feature the exchange of multimedia, emojis, file transfer, VoIP (voice calling), and video chat capabilities. Instant messaging systems facilitate connections between specified known users (often using a contact list also known as a "buddy list" or "friend list") or in chat rooms, and can be standalone apps or integrated into a wider social media platform, or in a website where it can, for instance, be used for conversational commerce. Originally the term "instant messaging" was distinguished from " text messaging" by being run on a computer network instead of a cellula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verizon Communications
Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 146 million subscribers as of March 31, 2025. The company was formed in 1983 as Bell Atlantic as a result of the breakup of the Bell System into seven companies, each a Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC), commonly referred to as "Baby Bells." The company was originally headquartered in Philadelphia and operated in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. In 1997, Bell Atlantic expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. While Bell Atlantic was the surviving company, the merged company moved its headquarters from Philadelphia to NYNEX's old headquarters in New York City. In 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE, which operat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Kimsey
James Verlin Kimsey (September 15, 1939 – March 1, 2016) was the co-founder of AOL. He was the first chairman of the company and its CEO until 1995. Although Kimsey is best known for having helped to create AOL, he also spearheaded many other business, military and philanthropic endeavors. Early life and education Kimsey was born in Washington D.C. in 1939 and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. After being dismissed from Gonzaga College High School, he attended St. John's College High School, followed by Georgetown University for one term on an honors scholarship, and then the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from which he graduated in 1962. Military Kimsey served in the U.S. Army, becoming a lieutenant and seeing active participation in U.S. interventions in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam. He served three combat tours as an Airborne Ranger, two in the Vietnam War, earning various awards for service and valor. In July 2005, Kimsey was inducted i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Online Service Provider
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup. In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, whil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Von Meister
William F. von Meister (February 21, 1942 – May 18, 1995) was an American entrepreneur who founded and participated in a number of startup ventures in the Washington, D.C., area. These included The Source, an early online service and CompuServe competitor, and Control Video Corporation, a predecessor to AOL. Early years William Ferdinand von Meister was born of noble German descent on February 21, 1942, in New York City, to F. W. von Meister and Eleanora Colloredo-Mannsfeld. His father, F. W. von Meister, was the godson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his mother was a countess. Von Meister attended high school at Middlesex Academy in Massachusetts, and a finishing school in Switzerland. He then attended Georgetown University. Though he never completed his undergraduate education, he persuaded nearby American University to enroll him in its master's program for business. Career After leaving Georgetown in 1973, von Meister started a wholesale liquor company, but found it "borin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
