Michel blew away my first week-end guess: the answer of today’s quizz was of course Steve Case, a co-founder and former CEO of America Online, later known as AOL. I was actually hoping to attract people and start a nice conversation, but I gave away too many information: Michel, a former marketing executive at PepsiCo, guessed thanks to the mention of the 1992 IPO, pioneering the Internet era. Kari would’ve found out thanks to the last sentence referring to the ethical blunder: a few weeks ago, AOL released the search histories of about 650,000 users – making privacy concerns hit the headlines and urging some of its top executives to leave the company.

In 2000, Case, the “third” Steve (Ballmer at MS and Wozniak at Apple) was under the Wall Street spotlights when an 11-year old ISP, AOL, took over for $166bn the century-old, traditional media company, namely Time Warner.

The MTV cofounder Case had hired to deal with the day-to-day running of the business was Bob Pittman. Under Pittman’s reign, who made customer acquisition cost go down from 400$ to $100-, Amazon ($19m) and Barnes & Nobles ($40m) bid and overbid to gain book-selling exclusivity.

What I like about Steve Case is his unconditional enthousiasm when speaking about customers. Steve Case was obsessed with customers. And I quote: “The center of my world is consumers. Every day I wake up and say, How can we make America Online more interesting, more useful, more fun, more affordable, so that it will attract a broader audience?“. And yet another: “Our strategy has always been crystal clear. Consumers want one place where they can find good Internet content and meet interesting people. And they want someone to make it easy for them”.

Doesn’t this last sentence remind you of anything? (Relatively) good Internet content + meet interesting people (well, people who with you share at least one common interest) = weblogs. Assuming this mission statement is still current at AOL, shouldn’t AOL competed with weblog service providers like Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger?

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The Scobleizer blog, in this post entitled “Microsoft fights for its reputation, where’s Apple and Google?”, brings to light the fact that Microsofties are keener to engage a conversation defending their products than employees from Apple and Google. I know very few people at Microsoft, all in Seattle, and one at Apple in Les Ulis, in the Paris outskirts, and from my own experience, the Scobleizer’s stance looks like true. The case of Google is more complex: Google top executives put so much energy in keeping everything it does secretive that I couldn’t picture its employees go out of the wood and fight.

What’s your opinion on this matter? Do you know companies whose employees are willing to get into the mud to preserve their reputation? Do you think such a behavior is good or evil for a brand?

Addendum October 11th 2006: Scobleizer again on Apple anonymous bloggers. I recommend that you take a look at the comments too, pretty interesting.

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A housekeeping announcement. One of my personal goal this year is to try to play at least one chess game per week. I’ve been looking for a good, free online chess players platform, and my investigation led me to GameKnot. Anything better to recommend me? Do you feel like joining? For your information, I’m a poor chess player but I really enjoy the game. I played maybe once or twice in the last 5 years…

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Michel de Guilhermier, a French blogger and CEO of Photoways, has found a great method to keep his blog-visitors awake on Sundays: he makes them try to answer a quizz. I’ve decided to grab this “best practice” of the blogosphere – by the way, many thanks Michel – and will make sure I write about an entrepreneur or top executive of the Information Technology industry every week-end. The guess is yours for this very first episode of my Week-End Quizz. This one’s really easy.

“I am the former CEO and co-founder of a major Internet corporation. Born in Hawaii, I didn’t study computer sciences at a tech buzzing place like Stanford, but political science at a Massachussets college rather. Before catching the Internet virus, I had worked for Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, in the Pizza Hut division. The company I was the CEO of went public in 1992, I had cofounded it alongside two colleagues I met when working at a video company. One had worked at Arpanet, the other one was a finance guy. My company was the first to replace usage charges by a flat-fee structure, and after being under the Wall Street spotlight in 2000, I stepped down as a CEO in 2003 to let a former MTV cofounder take over the job. But the rules of the Internet had already changed, and since then my company has been trying to reinvent itself a business case, and recently made a big, big ethical mistake. Who am I? Which Internet company was I the CEO of?”

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