My Life at AOL

by Julia L. Wilkinson

Book Overview

We see stories everywhere these days about the "instant millionaires" the Internet industry created. But nowhere is there a first-person true-life account of what it was like to be an employee of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 075961525X
• ISBN13: 9780759615250
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: 1st Book Library
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A great read for any CEO or employee finding themselves now in the trenches of a web 2.0 company

As both a former and current CEO of Internet startups, I found numerous lessons learned and gems of perspective from Julia Wilkinson's My Life at AOL. Given her position in the trenches, and not in the board room, her story adds a refreshing perspective often lacking in other books by companies' founders and executives (e.g., like one of my favorites, Burn Rate). I actively refer this book to several friends who have recently started Web 2.0 companies and who are experiencing the same issues Julia covers regarding starting and harnessing an online community. Personally, I have been able to apply similar lessons to my company and to several conversations where insight to the future comes from understanding the roots of the past pioneers such as AOL, especially from the perspective from the trenches. Do you know what AOL's first vision was and why it failed? Julia covers that, among other topics, with pre-AOL interviews of the early, early days...

Great Writing by a Great Writer

This book is great for anyone interested in finding out about how it feels to work at a small iffy start-up company. The author lets us climb on for the rollercoaster as the company goes through the initial ups and downs, on its way to becoming the largest internet provider in the world. It's filled with interesting facts and spiced up with enough personal accounts to make the reader feel like a real insider. Bravo!

A Real Insiders View

I worked with Julia at AOL and she offers tales from a perspective I guarantee you haven't read anywhere else. Kara Swisher's "AOL.COM" told the story from the executive level. Julia's "My Life At AOL" tells it from the perspective of the regular employees who made the service run on a day to day basis. It's a look at things that happened when AOL was a wacky little company; very different from today's media behemoth.

An Insider's Tale

This book is a lively read--a brisk account of the energetic, imaginative and bright young people at the birth of AOL. It's enlivened by Ms. Wilkinson's breezy and engaging "voice." She mangages to give a sense of the atmosphere in the offices of the growing company with descriptions of brainstorming sessions illustrated with lots of colorful quotes. She presents well-thought out examples of the Internet as a powerful double-edged sword. While acknowledging its potentially negative aspects, she makes a strong case for it as a positive and highly beneficial tool. Being technologically challenged, I esepcially enjoyed the Appendix--A Cyber-Lingo Glossary:How To Speak AOL and the list of "smilies" and "emoticons," those wacky little lighthearted symbols that are shorthand ways of expressing emotions.