AOL Service Surpasses 21 Million Members; Average Member's Time Online Climbs to Over One Hour Daily - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Feb 7, 2000

America Online, Inc., the world's leading interactive services company, Wednesday announced that membership of its AOL service has surpassed 21 million. On Christmas Day 1999, more new members joined AOL than on any single day in the company's history.

For the first time, AOL subscribers now are averaging more than one hour online daily -- 63 minutes this month -- underscoring that the AOL experience is becoming increasing valuable and necessary to its members' everyday lives.

Bob Pittman, America Online's President and Chief Operating Officer, said: "We could not be more pleased to see that the AOL service continues to set the standard as the premium mass market service. Just as important, our members recognize the ever-increasing value of AOL membership and have expanded their time online to more than an hour daily. This climbing usage shows that AOL subscribers are increasingly taking advantage of the full range of AOL member benefits including our new AOL 5.0 software and new features such as our personal online schedule, 'My Calendar,' 'You've Got Pictures' and Shop@AOL. And we are continuing to raise the bar through our AOL Anywhere strategy of extending AOL interactivity through such products as AOL TV, as well as Palm Pilots and other mobile companion devices."

Among the AOL service's other usage records, underscoring that it is becoming more and more essential to members' everyday lives, are:

* Nearly 60% of all member sessions are on AOL 5.0; * Over 6 million members have set up the personal online scheduler "My Calendar;" * More than 1.6 million people now use the service at the same time during peak periods (compared to one million a year ago); * 110 million e-mails sent daily (50 million a year ago); * 600 million instant messages sent per day (400 million a year ago); * 200 million stock quotes daily (113 million a year ago); and * 5.2 billion Web URLs served a day (2.1 billion a year ago).

Founded in 1985, America Online, Inc., based in Dulles, Virginia, is the world's leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies, and e-commerce services.

America Online, Inc. operates: two worldwide Internet services, America Online, with more than 21 million members, and CompuServe, with more than 2.5 million members; several leading Internet brands including ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger and Digital City, Inc.; the Netscape Netcenter and AOL.COM portals; the Netscape Navigator and Communicator browsers; AOL MovieFone, the nation's No. 1 movie listing guide and ticketing service; and Spinner.com and NullSoft's Winamp, leaders in Internet music.

Through its strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems, the company develops and offers easy-to-deploy, end-to-end e-commerce and enterprise solutions for companies operating in the Net Economy.