Last week, Ben Smith at Politico made the argument that clinging to a seemingly outdated AOL e-mail address might have somehow become a weird sort of status symbol, to judge by the Washington power brokers and high-profile media people who still use theirs. In the new issue of Playboy, Paul Rudd gives Smith's theory further credence: Not only do he and Judd Apatow still have AOL e-mail addresses, but so do Tina Fey, Steve Carell, and Sarah Silverman. (Vulture knows from experience that Tilda Swinton and David Arquette do, too, but then, those two have so much in common already.) "I like AOL because it's so embarrassing," Rudd explains. "People look at you as if you're a fossil. Which you are. But I enjoy that embarrassment. I like being on the outside. Having an AOL address is like wearing Ocean Pacific shorts. It's so uncool that it's cool." [Playboy] ||||| There's long been a certain stigma attached to an AOL.com email account, and those of us obsessed with keeping up with the times have cycled through Hotmail, Earthlink, Yahoo!, and any number of corporate domains before ending with the current standard of email modernity, the Gmail account. 
 
 But despite Google's best efforts to stigmatize those unfashionable old domains, I've started to notice a certain prestige attached to the AOL.com survivors. Now that my mother has switched to Gmail, virtually the only people I email at AOL accounts are bigshots -- people who were already so important by the time the various new fads (and technical advantages) arrived that they couldn't be bothered to switch, and had nothing to prove to anyone. 
 
 This is not, to say the least, a crowd of technophobes. Some, like Joe Trippi and Arianna Huffington, are seen as techno-sages. Rather, it's a generation of the political and media elite. It occurs to me that part of the reason some never switched is that they were early adaptors of mobile devices, which don't care which service you're using. And if they've held on this long, there's really no reason to give up now on something that's cycled back to being a status symbol. 
 
 With the help of some friends on Twitter, here's a list of people who have fairly recently been reachable, often with quirky handles, on their old AOL accounts: 
 
 POLITICS: David Axelrod, Jim Messina, John Weaver, Joe Trippi, Mandy Grunwald, Dick Morris (a recent defector to gmail), Frank Luntz, Ed Rollins, Guy Cecil, Tad Devine, Al Franken, Aaron Schock MEDIA: Matt Drudge, Arianna Huffington (who was holding onto an AOL account long before AOL bought her company), David Brooks, David Corn, Robert Draper, Rick Perlstein, Ann Coulter, Tina Brown, Lawrence O'Donnell 
 
 Most of them, it should be noted, also have other accounts. "I have newfangled email addresses too but I'm fond of the original," emailed Grunwald. 
 
 The next item in this series will address political figures who retain Earthlink accounts, and really don't care what you think about it. ||||| NEWS - DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 
 
 
 
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 Michael Wolff: AOL-HuffPo Milestone Duly Noted -By Michael Wolff 
 
 
 
 
 
 Say this for Tim Armstrong: He’s stayed on message, turning his inchoate business into a potentially reasonable collection of content assets—a manly bid to save himself and his company from the oblivion everybody expected. 
 
 
 
 AOL is all of a sudden something like the new Hearst of the Internet. That is, Hearst in the sense of a lot of well-performing, mass market, not-too-classy, print and television properties. The vision thing isn’t strong, but, anyway, it all works if we run the place cheaply enough. 
 
 
 
 As for HuffPo, it’s a leveling moment. Here is one of the most successful content ventures in the history of the Internet, and its return to investors is not more than four times and probably close to three times. Not horrible, but hardly the Internet. 
 
 
 
 It’s an advertising play. 
 
 
 
 What’s wrong with the Internet and with HuffPo and with AOL is that Internet content CPMs suck. HuffPo, as a senior-most media buyer told me over lunch last week, will sell anything and do anything for an ad buy—becoming the true generic mix-up of the sponsored and the true—and still it couldn’t muster a CPM that was worth much. That would be true of AOL, too. What the business demands, then, is ever-more traffic—and this is where the combination is arguably "one and one makes three" (we conjure an extra page view from your traffic, you conjure one from ours)—ever more miserly economies of scale, and a whole new level of clout. 
 
 
 
 That last point is the play: clout. 
 
 
 
 The proposition is that AOL is on the way to controlling so much traffic and so much content real estate that it can start to have more meaningful, more creative, more—spread your arms, and gesticulate widely—wide-ranging conversations with marketers and media buyers. The combination of so many opportunities and so much one-stop ease and so much smart and efficient packaging can result in significant margin improvement. 
 
 
 
 In other words, new media becomes old—if it’s lucky. 
 
 The content rollup has begun.Say this for Tim Armstrong: He’s stayed on message, turning his inchoate business into a potentially reasonable collection of content assets—a manly bid to save himself and his company from the oblivion everybody expected.AOL is all of a sudden something like the new Hearst of the Internet. That is, Hearst in the sense of a lot of well-performing, mass market, not-too-classy, print and television properties. The vision thing isn’t strong, but, anyway, it all works if we run the place cheaply enough.As for HuffPo, it’s a leveling moment. Here is one of the most successful content ventures in the history of the Internet, and its return to investors is not more than four times and probably close to three times. Not horrible, but hardly the Internet.It’s an advertising play.What’s wrong with the Internet and with HuffPo and with AOL is that Internet content CPMs suck. HuffPo, as a senior-most media buyer told me over lunch last week, will sell anything and do anything for an ad buy—becoming the true generic mix-up of the sponsored and the true—and still it couldn’t muster a CPM that was worth much. That would be true of AOL, too. What the business demands, then, is ever-more traffic—and this is where the combination is arguably "one and one makes three" (we conjure an extra page view from your traffic, you conjure one from ours)—ever more miserly economies of scale, and a whole new level of clout.That last point is the play: clout.The proposition is that AOL is on the way to controlling so much traffic and so much content real estate that it can start to have more meaningful, more creative, more—spread your arms, and gesticulate widely—wide-ranging conversations with marketers and media buyers. The combination of so many opportunities and so much one-stop ease and so much smart and efficient packaging can result in significant margin improvement.In other words, new media becomes old—if it’s lucky. 
 
 
 
 Share on LinkedIn Save E-mail Print Most Popular RSS Reprints Michael Wolff: AOL-HuffPo Milestone Duly Noted -By Michael Wolff 
 
 
 
 
 
 Say this for Tim Armstrong: He’s stayed on message, turning his inchoate business into a potentially reasonable collection of content assets—a manly bid to save himself and his company from the oblivion everybody expected. 
 
 
 
 AOL is all of a sudden something like the new Hearst of the Internet. That is, Hearst in the sense of a lot of well-performing, mass market, not-too-classy, print and television properties. The vision thing isn’t strong, but, anyway, it all works if we run the place cheaply enough. 
 
 
 
 As for HuffPo, it’s a leveling moment. Here is one of the most successful content ventures in the history of the Internet, and its return to investors is not more than four times and probably close to three times. Not horrible, but hardly the Internet. 
 
 
 
 It’s an advertising play. 
 
 
 
 What’s wrong with the Internet and with HuffPo and with AOL is that Internet content CPMs suck. HuffPo, as a senior-most media buyer told me over lunch last week, will sell anything and do anything for an ad buy—becoming the true generic mix-up of the sponsored and the true—and still it couldn’t muster a CPM that was worth much. That would be true of AOL, too. What the business demands, then, is ever-more traffic—and this is where the combination is arguably "one and one makes three" (we conjure an extra page view from your traffic, you conjure one from ours)—ever more miserly economies of scale, and a whole new level of clout. 
 
 
 
 That last point is the play: clout. 
 
 
 
 The proposition is that AOL is on the way to controlling so much traffic and so much content real estate that it can start to have more meaningful, more creative, more—spread your arms, and gesticulate widely—wide-ranging conversations with marketers and media buyers. The combination of so many opportunities and so much one-stop ease and so much smart and efficient packaging can result in significant margin improvement. 
 
 
 
 In other words, new media becomes old—if it’s lucky. The content rollup has begun.Say this for Tim Armstrong: He’s stayed on message, turning his inchoate business into a potentially reasonable collection of content assets—a manly bid to save himself and his company from the oblivion everybody expected.AOL is all of a sudden something like the new Hearst of the Internet. That is, Hearst in the sense of a lot of well-performing, mass market, not-too-classy, print and television properties. The vision thing isn’t strong, but, anyway, it all works if we run the place cheaply enough.As for HuffPo, it’s a leveling moment. Here is one of the most successful content ventures in the history of the Internet, and its return to investors is not more than four times and probably close to three times. Not horrible, but hardly the Internet.It’s an advertising play.What’s wrong with the Internet and with HuffPo and with AOL is that Internet content CPMs suck. HuffPo, as a senior-most media buyer told me over lunch last week, will sell anything and do anything for an ad buy—becoming the true generic mix-up of the sponsored and the true—and still it couldn’t muster a CPM that was worth much. That would be true of AOL, too. What the business demands, then, is ever-more traffic—and this is where the combination is arguably "one and one makes three" (we conjure an extra page view from your traffic, you conjure one from ours)—ever more miserly economies of scale, and a whole new level of clout.That last point is the play: clout.The proposition is that AOL is on the way to controlling so much traffic and so much content real estate that it can start to have more meaningful, more creative, more—spread your arms, and gesticulate widely—wide-ranging conversations with marketers and media buyers. The combination of so many opportunities and so much one-stop ease and so much smart and efficient packaging can result in significant margin improvement.In other words, new media becomes old—if it’s lucky. Subscribe to Mediaweek 
 
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– AOL.com email addresses are so nineties, right? But apparently they're also a sort of weird status symbol amongst a certain set. Ben Smith first made the argument last week on Politico, noting that despite the "stigma" long associated with the AOL.com domain, there's also "a certain prestige" attached to those who have held on nonetheless. He offers up a long list of politics and media bigshots, including David Axelrod, Matt Drudge, Arianna Huffington, and Ann Coulter, who still have their accounts. And it turns out celebrities, too, often hang onto AOL.com addresses, a trend observed by Playboy and brought up in a recent interview with Paul Rudd (who, yes, has an AOL.com address). "I like AOL because it’s so embarrassing. People look at you as if you’re a fossil. Which you are. But I enjoy that embarrassment," he says. "I like being on the outside. Having an AOL address is like wearing Ocean Pacific shorts. It’s so uncool that it’s cool." Other celebs who can be reached at AOL.com include Judd Apatow, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman—and, as noted by New York, Tilda Swinton and David Arquette.