The Competitive World of AOL Disc Collecting
vice.com
vice.com
For fiscal years 1995 and 1996, AOL capitalized most of the costs
of acquiring new subscribers as "deferred membership acquisition
costs" ("DMAC") -- including the costs associated with sending disks
to potential customers and the fees paid to computer equipment
manufacturers who bundled AOL software onto their equipment -- and
reported those costs as an asset on its balance sheet, instead of
expensing those costs as incurred.
Had these costs been properly expensed as incurred, AOL's 1995 reported
pretax loss would have been increased from $21 million to $98 million
(including the write-off of DMAC that existed as of the end of fiscal
year 1994), and AOL's 1996 reported pretax income of $62 million
would have been decreased to a pretax loss of $175 million.
Odd what people collect.
That's what AOL was originally called, and it was so fascinating for a kid who had never even heard of "online" back around '89 or so.
I had a friend, a very big guy, who kept a few hundred AOL CDs in the trunk of his car. He would put one in his pocket when he went to friend's houses. When he used the bathroom, his poop was often too big to go down the toilet so he would use the CDs to cut up the poop first.
True story.