If you are unfortunate enough to remember logging on to the internet by the archaic dial-up connection, you remember the phrase, “You’ve got mail.” It was the classic greeting heard when you first logged into AOL (America Online). So, whatever happened to AOL? Suprisingly, according to Gizmodo, 3 million people still use the dial-up service today. Either these people aren’t aware that dial-up is outdated, or are content listening to the awful beeping and buzzing every time they log on.
AOL is now attempting to regain user following by offering a different kind of email service, one that doesn’t kick you off when someone in your house picks up the land line telephone. It’s called Alto, and instead of providing a new email service, it organizes your existing one. Whether you have Yahoo of Google mail, it works with other email accounts to clean out and organize messages and sort through its contents. Instead of your usual list of daily emails, Alto organizes your inbox into “stacks.” Emails are then organized into these stacks in categories such as “daily deals,” “social notifications,” “retailers,” or you can create your own stack such as “family” or “friends.”
The idea of the service is to make going through your email less stressful. Will AOL succeed with its new Alto service? It sounds like a good idea, but we’ll see if it stands the test of the cyberverse. Currently, users can sign up on the Alto homepage to request an invitation for use. Good luck AOL.