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Title: There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future by Kara Swisher, Lisa Dickey ISBN: 1-4000-4963-6 Publisher: Crown Business Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: A really dumb book
Comment: Probably one of the poorest written books I have ever attempted to read. The author repeats things over and over to gain word content, but says very little of substance.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent account of the AOL - Time Warner merger.
Comment: This is a very good book on the AOL Time Warner merger. This merger is unusual, because it is the acquirer (AOL) that got weakened much more than the acquired (Time Warner). Also interesting, it is not so obvious why that was the case. Right after the merger, the AOL executives got the upper hand over the Time Warner ones. This was logical, and was a confirmation of who bought up whom. So, given that the AOL executives had the upper hand, and that AOL was doing great before the merger, what triggered the demise of the company post merger?
The author makes a well detailed and successful case that the unraveling of AOL was associated with the bitterness of the Time Warner executives as the result of not being treated as equals. As a result, they conducted a quiet mutiny by consciously underperforming on all the projects and ventures related to AOL. And, they succeeded marvelously.
The author also makes a case that AOL is not over. And, that it has still a bright future within the internet and technology domain. Here the author is on much thinner ice. Her case is more about subjectivity and personal likings than anything else.
Nevertheless, this book is overall an excellent and easy read. The author style is very lively and makes for a fast page turner. It is also very personal. She seems to know and meet everyone in the industry and have interesting personal opinions on them all. This renders the book so much more interesting then just an extended Harvard case study which so many books of this type end up becoming.
Rating: 5
Summary: It's about more than just AOL
Comment: This is more than a page-turner about the ill fated deal. Ordinarily an objective reporter, Swisher gives her prescription for redeeming the consumer friendliness of the AOL Internet service -- abandoned by its management for deals: "advertising" and positioning deals with upstart dot coms needing IPO credibility; and the calculated megadeal of putting Time Warner's valuable "traditional" media assets under the dot com "bubble". Inadvertently, Swisher also makes another important point: believe what you read, but be skeptical about believing it as truth. Thanks to her superlative reporting for the Wall Street Journal out of Silicon Valley, the "street" (if not the public) understood the radical importance of the Internet, but lost its critical faculties about which players had real businesses. Concurrently, Time Inc.'s "Fortune" magazine also chronicled many newsworthy Internet stories. Too many must have believed the media hype, and regrettably, too many entrepreneurs crashed when reality set in. Swisher tells the AOL Time Warner story thoroughly and dramatically. Her book should be required reading in business schools.
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