Nudity on AOL UK

The “new” AOL UK home page (same old page, if you use AOL.com) soft-launched May 14th. AOL was so pumped they added a direct link to it from their Corporate press release. That’s right: they couldn’t wait for UK mums to gasp as kids viewed naked women in seductive poses on AOL UK. No other web company would feature nudity on a home page viewed by millions of people each day but this is AOL we’re talking about – anything for an ad dollar, I suppose.

Terribly indecent for the AOL UK home page, don’t you think?

Click image for full-size uncensored version – possibly NSFW.

I wouldn’t want my kids looking at that – would you?

With 26 million existing AOL software users this blog might be around forever.

“AOL’s software is used by more than 26.5 million people on broadband and dial-up connections every day.” [source]

Really? I don’t believe 26 million people could be that stupid. When this little factoid jumped off an AOL Corporate press release at me I almost lost my lunch (or dinner, or Doritos – whatever I’d been ingesting).

Here I was, telling readers that at most I’d keep my blog around for another year, then here was AOL all up in my face jeering, “We’ve got millions more for you! 26 million more, to be exact.”

Soon it occurred to me that this fact (if it really is a fact; none of us really trust ComScore data) could only work to my benefit, since it means I still have 26 million people to rid of AOL. That’s a lot of people, folks – but strangely enough, it doesn’t bother me.

BTW…for a thorough debunking of AOL’s top listing in the Forrester survey read this. Being “top-rated” is not the same as being “the best”.

How to keep your AOL email, Address Book and AOL Favorites when you quit AOL.

Before you read this, it’s important to know that you don’t need AOL software anymore to get your AOL email. Once you cancel AOL and remove AOL from your computer, just sign in at http://aol.com/ to read your mail online.

The online version of AOL mail does everything the offline version does: it saves hard copies of email to your PC, it allows you to read and reply to email using rich or plain text formats, and it stores an unlimited amount of email.

If you would like to use the AOL program on your computer despite this warning, read on…