Allow all AOL.com mail free users to use the beta software
As of January 24, 2017, you all have cut off letting free AOL mail users to beta test, use, and contribute to this beta program. I had all four of my screen names registered and set up to use this service and so did my mom. Mom and I have both been involved with your service in some form or another since we first signed up as paid dial up subscribers back in 1993. Remember that? That was back when AOL ran on DOS from a 3 and half inch floppy drive. Now, look how far you all have progressed. From paid slow dial up to having to offer many of your services free to broadband Internet subscribers or those who would soon as pay for cheaper dial up. Beginning with the former stand alone AOL Instant Messenger client to AOL Mail. But, you all had to do this in order to keep your brand name out there and then rely on advertising to pay the bills. Unfortunately, now broadband has managed to knock you all down so far that you had to go and merge with Verizon and Yahoo and now you all are discontinuing use of your beta software to free users. Although beta is meant to be a work in progress and not perfect by any means, you all allowing free users to use it meant that you all were also getting much valuable feedback from these free users, which meant that you all were able to fix many bugs before releasing this software as gold master to paid users. Now, you all have essentially gone and cut your own throats by cutting off use of your beta software to free users. Something that I feel is going to wind up being another in the string of many bad business decisions made by you all over the last 25 years. Technology changes with the times and you all must change with it to keep up or it will come back to bite you all in the rear. This was something that your former chairman Steve Case failed to realize and understand and it ended up coming back to bite him the in rear. This happen with your now sister property Yahoo also. Yahoo failed to realize the changes in technology to the point of where hackers compromised many of their free users' accounts which your former chairwoman Marissa Mayer tried her best to cover up and it ended up coming back to bite her in the rear end also. What I'm saying here is I know that the general idea behind all of this is to force free users into becoming paying subscribers, but as history has shown, these free users will eventually find another way to get by and when they do, that often times means that your brand name is no longer relevant to them any more and when that happens, guess what else happens? Your advertising revenue goes way down because people aren't using your service anymore. Any good marketing person will tell you that. So, if you all want to keep yourselves relevant on the Internet, then it's time to cut out this greedy idea of yours and restore access to your beta software to free mail users.
Robbie Stewart
shared this idea
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louge
commented
I am a free user and am using the the aol gold beta ...not sure what you are referring to with your post / suggestion