Once mighty AOL has lost 1/3 of its paying clientèle… in a year. Ouch. In some ways I’m not surprised… how many people do you know who still use AOL? When it first came out, AOL dominated the online access market with its ubiquitous free floppy disks and later CDs coming at you from every angle.

But then, people grew seemingly more interested in the broader array of content offered through the Internet, and AOL seemed like a sad middleman for the last 7 years or so. It will be interesting to see if its advertising model works…