Friday, November 30, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 30, 1998 -- Fitness Plans, PCs, & DVDs, and a Micro-Christmas Tree

November 30, 1998: The promos are pretty prosaic (although what the hell does "High DVDends" mean?); you can see in first page preview we're continuing to promote the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan (remember her?) product placement movie You've Got Mail, which would open in a few weeks:
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In the mid-day update, you can see a few perfectly reasonable and not at all capricious changes below the fold:
  • In the AOL NetFind column, we moved Personal Home Pages down in favor of Yellow Pages; the first text link listing is still "Search the Web," directly below the functional search box argh
  • In the Shopping column, we changed the mini-turkey to a mini-Christmas tree—though at that size, it could have been anything
  • And in the Free Products column, the AIM 2.0 Beta is now an AIM 2.0 Preview
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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Thursday, November 29, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 29, 1998 -- Cheap Ski Travel

November 29, 1998: A pretty generic Travel promo promising low airfares for winter travel, plus genealogy (which I always would try to misspell "genaology") and indoor exercise gear:

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 28, 1998 -- Bobby Brown and Notre Dame Football

November 28, 1998: Bobby Brown was a wide receiver for Notre Dame, so naturally we went with a "My Prerogative" reference.

The yellow line on the screenshot doesn't look like a printing error; it looks more like a highlighter showing the screen fold line at ridiculous mid-1990s AOL client browser screen resolutions.

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 27, 1998 -- When Black Friday Comes

November 27, 1998: Post-Thanksgiving content, with shopping, fitness-shaming, and more shopping. I don't think Black Friday was quite as stampede-y back then (and Cyber Monday definitely wouldn't be a thing for a few more years).

The main promo features the requisite Steely Dan reference. Also, I forgot until I saw the pencil mark, but in the preceding week (Nov. 20), we changed the teeny-tiny Shopping column from a generic shopping cart/basket to... is that supposed to be a turkey? Who can tell at that size... from here it looks like a squirrel in a box. Anyway, the pencil mark says "X-mas tree," so that's what you'll see there soon:

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Monday, November 26, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 26, 1998 -- Happy Thanksgiving

November 26, 1998: The lead spot for Thanksgiving was a shopping promo, along with Sports and more shopping. And while this was only a preview from our staging server, you can see twin AOL.com crossword house ads, a small taste of what we would later call "jackpotting."

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Sunday, November 25, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 25, 1998 -- Pre-Thanksgiving Trio

November 25, 1998: Not sure why I did two updates for the day before Thanksgiving; the lead spot was last-minute cooking tips, while the lead text promo was about movies: Babe: Pig in the City; the Drew Barrymore movie Home Fries; and the Cameron Diaz movie Very Bad Things.
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We adjusted the Web Centers column to put Autos at the front of a lineup with no discernible lineup; there's also a Holiday shopping text promo at the top of the Shopping promo. I did another version after this but have no idea what the difference was
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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Saturday, November 24, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 24, 1998 -- AOL Buys Netscape for $4.2 billion

November 24, 1998: The lead promo is for online shopping, we added Personal Home Pages in the AOL Netfind column (why not in Free Products? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and we started out with Buddy Chat in the top promo, but then swapped out after we got official confirmation of the self-serving news of the day...
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...AOL acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion. (A sideline to that story was a 3-year alliance with Sun Microsystems "to develop the next generation of e-commerce solutions and Internet devices using Sun's Java technology.")

Yeah.
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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Friday, November 23, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 23, 1998 -- Crosswords, a Dow Record, and Buying Netscape

November 23, 1998: We started out with another My News crossword promo (rerun) and a generic Personal Finance stock market promo; this got swapped out with a late day update because...
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...the Dow hit a new record (a dizzying 9,374.27); but wait, there's more! The top text promo says, "AOL Negotiating to Buy Netscape," which we were. People on the AOL.com team were involved in the negotiations; for a while, we knew something was up, but we didn't know what, although we did get a codename: Project N. And now we knew why.
1998_11_23a
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Thursday, November 22, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 22, 1998 -- You Are Here (With Maps & Directions)

November 22, 1998: Thanksgiving in 1998 wasn't until the 26th, but Happy Thanksgiving in the present day.

We were pushing hard on the new Maps & Directions feature. I thought it was a partnership with Mapquest, but Wikipedia says Mapquest didn't become Mapquest until 1999, so perhaps it was with the proto-Mapquest.

For the graphic promo, we used a segment of an actual Maps & Directions map with "you are here" artfully (*cough*) superimposed. I did a few seconds of research and the intersection is East Hillsdale Boulevard and the 101 in San Mateo.

I don't think the location had any particular significance or hidden meaning, outside having a cloverleaf intersection and a bit of water for color:

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 21, 1998 -- Kentucky Faces Tennessee in NCAA Football

November 21, 1998: Can Kentucky's Tim Couch bench the Volunteers? Er, no. Very much no.


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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 20, 1998 -- Gettin' Buggy With It (ugh)

November 20, 1998: We'd featured Antz in October, and followed it up with fall 1998's other animated insect movie, A Bug's Life.

The headline of course is a very unsubtle reference to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," which had only been out a year at that point.

The other text promos were for the rockin' features of AOL 4.0, as well as a notional mall-hating Santa shopping on the Web. You can see that the top layout is a little off, because the graphic promo's text headline runs to five lines instead of four. We published a mid-day update to fix it:
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We cut out the article "the," restoring order to the top block. In the right column, you can see a scribble that notes how we finally fixed the duplicative AIM and AIM 2.0 Beta links:
1998_11_20a
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Monday, November 19, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 19, 1998 -- The Great American Smokeout

November 19, 1998: The Great American Smokeout is the third Thursday of November, and we promoted smoking cessation resources in the Health Web Center from the top spot.

The other text promos are for AOL White Pages and holiday food, using imperatives: Get the Digits and Get Cooking. We were big on "get" and any other three-letter call-to-action verbs to fit into headlines:

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Sunday, November 18, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 18, 1998 -- Mortgage Rates and Maps & Directions

November 18, 1998: The lead promo focuses on Real Estate listings, exhorting readers to buy a house because of low mortgage rates. (Average rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage in November 1998 were around 7 percent.)

Also, if you look in the left NetFind column, you'll see a new Maps & Directions item. This being then, it would have been Mapquest.
1998_11_18
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Saturday, November 17, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 17, 1998 -- AIM, the Tripp Tapes, and Monica Lewinsky's Voice

November 17, 1998: Started the day with another AIM graphic promo and Personal Finance and home video promos, when the House Judiciary Committee releases the Linda Tripp tapes... we did a mid-day update on it:

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With 20 years of hindsight, I have to say that "Admit It: You're Curious. You want to hear Monica's voice" is a garbage headline.
1998_11_17
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Friday, November 16, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 16, 1998 -- Leonid Meteor Shower and Fixing a Mistake

November 16, 1998: The lead spot features a relatively rare promotion of the Research & Learn Web Center for the Leonid meteor shower. The first text promo also promises exclusive clips of Jewel's album Spirit, which debuted the next day.

More importantly, this ends the multi-day run of the incorrect month in the dateline, as you can see by the handwritten correction; we did a mid-day update to correct it:


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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Thursday, November 15, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Oct... er Nov. 15, 1998 -- Dateline Mistakes, Online Crosswords, Aborted Airstrikes

November 15, 1998: The lead graphic promo features My News online crossword puzzles; I remember working with a graphic designer to come up with a crossword puzzle excerpt that was at least not possible (unlike the first version we came up with).

More notably, it looks like I screwed up the dateline, putting October instead of November. I have every reason to believe it wasn't just a preview error, but actually went live. (Not sure if it was caused by reusing a previous promo block and forgetting to change the date, or just a brain fart causing me to forget what month it was.)

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We also did a rare Sunday update; the Clinton administration ordered, then aborted airstrikes against Iraq over tensions involving weapons inspections; as you can see, I updated the existing promo block, including the month error:
1998_11_15a
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 14, 1998 -- Prepare Your Car for Winter

November 14, 1998: The lead promo is related to winter weather; not sure if it was an Autos Web Center or News package. In the text promos, we have a Sports Web Center promo for college basketball, and a fruitcake-disparaging holiday ecards promo. In the ads... well, not sure why the ads didn't show up, but remember this is a screen shot off the preview server and not a live page:
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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 13, 1998 -- Travel Holiday Bargains

November 13, 1998: Travel holiday bargains featuring a Strange Brew reference in the lead spot; it was also Friday the 13th (not sure what that has to do with clothes shopping), and the movie weekend promo name checks Brad Pitt vs. Jennifer Love Hewitt in Movies; it was a pretty oblique (but space-compliant) way to reference Meet Joe Black and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

Also, you can see the updated Web Center column listings, with the order I'd penciled in on Nov. 10: Entertainment, Sports, Travel, Personal Finance, Computing, Local, News, and then all the rest. This was probably a listing based on editorial (or was it business--wasn't really a difference back then) priority, not actual usage:
1998_11_13
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Monday, November 12, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 12, 1998 -- AOL Netmail Again

November 12, 1998: Once again, going to the "check your AOL email at work" well with an AOL NetMail main promo, then stock quotes and a Martha Stewart reference in a holiday shopping promo.

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Sunday, November 11, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 11, 1998 -- Leo's a Scorpio

November 11, 1998: We celebrated Leonardo DiCaprio's 24th birthday by pointing to some manner of celebrity gossip/news in the Entertainment Web Center. In the text promos, we have a Veterans Day promo and a ridiculous auction deals shopping promo (99% discounts... come on):


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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Saturday, November 10, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 10, 1998 -- Winter Women's Health

November 10, 1998: Lead promo features pretty stock photo woman to promote Women's Health content, which basically meant exercise and diet content. The top text promo features the all-new AOL 4.0, while the second features online shopping for the anti-procrastinator.

In the Web Centers column, you can see pencil markings for what looks like proposed adjustments to the listing order, presumably based on their popularity. (Or at least our perceptions of their popularity. This starts to get into our metrics process, which I'll get into more later.)
1998_11_10
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Friday, November 09, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 9, 1998 -- Free Chat Now With AOL Instant Messenger

November 9, 1998: Another AIM promo, using the same non-animated fake chat window as before. In the second music text promo, Pump Up Your Jams is clearly a Technotronic reference.

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[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Thursday, November 08, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 8, 1998 -- 'The X-Files' Season 6 Premieres

November 8, 1998: The X-Files kicked off Season 6, so we featured a Gillian Anderson pic in the lead promo spot. Other than that, a seasonally relevant Home & Garden Web Center promo, and a shopping promo featuring an infuriating lack of serial comma. I guess it was AOL style at the time. Or I was a very different person back then:
1998_11_08
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Wednesday, November 07, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 7, 1998 -- Glenn Down, Newt Out

November 7, 1998: The lead promo featured a dressed-up Donna Summer reference in the service of a Personal Finance quiz, but the better headline was in the next text promo, "Glenn Down, Newt Out"—as in John Glenn returning from his second space flight and Newt Gingrich stepping down as Speaker.

The second text promo also features a John Glenn tie-in, since it promoted the Tom Wolfe book, A Man in Full, using a reference to his earlier work on the space race that featured Glenn as one of the Mercury Seven.
1998_11_07
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Tuesday, November 06, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 6, 1998 -- "The Siege" Turns Into a Newt

November 6, 1998: The Friday started with a standard weekend lineup, featuring the Denzel Washington movie The Siege (about the loss of civil liberties after a series of radical Islamist terrorist attacks, ha ha I know right?) when suddenly....

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...Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House. The serial adulterer, a key figure in the Clinton impeachment process, was succeeded by Dennis Hastert, serial child molester.
1998_11_06a
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Monday, November 05, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 5, 1998 -- Last Chance to Win

November 5, 1998: The lead promo featured the last chance to enter a My News registration sweepstakes (for a whopping $500 in books, presumably from Amazon) in what was probably the most... promotional promo we'd run in the top spot to date.

The other two promos were a bit cheekier, with "the boss isn't looking" and "babies aren't little people" and all that.
1998_11_05
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Sunday, November 04, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 4, 1998 -- Fall Foliage Travel

November 4, 1998: A generic tout for cheap holiday fares disguised as a fall travel promo in the main spot, along with election results in My News and a Music shopping promo.

Oh, and dig the redundant AIM promos in the Free Products column: One for the AIM 1.0 client, and the AIM 2.0 Beta.

1998_11_04
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Saturday, November 03, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 3, 1998 -- Election Day

November 3, 1998: For Election Day, we went with a red, white, and blue color scheme in the top block (well, blue, white, and red), promoting election results, which apparently weren't that dramatic:
1998_11_03
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Friday, November 02, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 2, 1998 -- Barbra Streisand Live Chat Event

November 2, 1998: Barbra Streisand did her first-ever online appearance in an AOL Live chat, apparently as part of a get-out-the-vote effort for the next day's election. We did an evening content update with a different photo and color block.

An event writeup—with full main stage transcript!—is online. AOL Live events at the time were fully text-only events. They were exclusive to the AOL service; I'd forgotten that they were accessible, or even visible, to the web audience. (Maybe this was a special exception.) Because they were text-only, many people were skeptical if the featured celebrity guest was on the other end of the line. (This was before the Reddit AMA-style proof became a thing.)

Anyway, in auditorium events, everyone could see the chat from the main stage, and you could text chat with the members of your "row" (maybe 10-20 people, I forget). You could submit your comments and questions to the event runners, who'd select questions that the guest would answer for all to see, but other than that, you'd only be interacting with members of your row... which many, many people did not understand.
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1998_11_02a
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]

Thursday, November 01, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Nov. 1, 1998 -- Alanis Replay

November 1, 1998: For a Sunday, we didn't promote football, but instead ran another promo for the Alanis Morissette CD. The first text promo was a suitably post-Halloween Health promo, while second one teases the next day's AOL Live event with Barbra Streisand, which I'd completely forgotten was a thing that happened.
1998_11_01
[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]