AOL Passes 14 Million Members

America Online Inc.
has now passed the 14-million-member mark, a milestone the company
attributes to continued growth momentum and a successful launch of the new
AOL 4.0 access software.

The company, which gained a reported 2 million members since April, also set several other milestones in October. AOL sent more than 1 billion e-mail messages over its network and can now handle 850,000
simultaneous users compared to 533,000 just one year ago. AOL member Web
sites are now recording 1.3 billion hits daily, three times the level a
year ago.

While AOL’s capacity has grown substantially, it hasn’t come cheap. The
service has spent hundreds of millions over the past two years to boost its
system capacity.

To keep pace with the growing membership, AOL continues to expand AOLnet,
its dial-up network. The total number of modems in the network has grown
past 925,000.

International growth has also been strong, hitting a record of 1.7 million
members. AOL said its members now spend an average of 46 minutes a day on
the service.

AOL President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Pittman attributed much of
the growth to the strong AOL brand and its easy-to-use interface.

“AOL’s brand name, convenience, unmatched content and ease-of-use continue
to attract more and more mass market consumers to our service. Heading into
this holiday season, we are confident that accelerated membership growth
and increased usage will add to our strong global momentum,” he said.