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From: akcs@ddsw1.mcs.com (BBS Public Access)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Info Needed on Prodigy Service
Message-ID: <14606@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 12 Nov 90 04:03:00 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 812, Message 5 of 6


There is a lot of discussion on the Well (San Francisco BBS)
concerning Prodigy.  Much flaming, but some informed commentary as
well.

Speculation has it the published subscription numbers (500,000) are
bogus.  One "subscription" may mean several family ID's - all of which
are included in the 500,000 figure even though they may be inactive or
fictional.  Prodigy users who cancelled their subscriptions and then
returned months later report their old IDs are still on the directory.
This suggests that cancelled subscriptions are still counted in the
500,000.

The current e-mail problem at Prodigy is related to their past
problems with controversial message boards.  Some months ago, Prodigy
removed several controversial message boards that were generating
flames.  This was done presumably to avoid offending advertisers and
preserve the "family" image.  Users of the cancelled boards were
outraged, but they apparently found a work-around with e-mail.
Result: specialty mailing lists flourished and e-mail traffic
exploded.  Some of the people who were coordinating the mailing lists
were sending thousands of e-mail messages every day.

This created another problem for Prodigy, which responded by charging
$.25 per e-mail message after the first 30 messages in a month.  This
is likely to put the kibosh on the mailing lists.

My take on this is that advertising and interactive communications
don't mix - if "interactive" means user-to-user interaction.  Prodigy
never had that sort of interaction in mind, though.