A recent story on Inside Edition showed up on the Internet about Elwood Edwards, the man who recorded the voice for AOL — “You’ve got mail!” As the story goes, he now drives for Uber, is 67, and was paid $200 for his now famous voice and audio clip. He did it as a favor for his wife, who at the time worked for AOL.
With the intention of being fair and balanced, two views of this short story will be offered for your consideration. One of the two is likely to annoy you, but it may be an indicator that you are taking sides either with AOL or Mr. Edwards.
The first question that comes to mind is, “Why didn’t AOL do more for Mr. Edwards?” The pro-business people will be saying that he agreed to do the job for the pro-offered price, and that sealed the deal. But that message was recorded when the concept of mobile was restricted to a huge cell (not smart) phone and AOL was the Internet service to have. Believe it or not, AOL had 2.3 million dial up subscribers as recently as 2014 and accounted for more than half of its 2nd quarter 2014 revenues. So the bottom line is that AOL’s bottom line had continued to grow from its start in 1990 until it merged with Time-Warner in 2006 and cut loose to fend for itself in 2009. So after all that, the company held on to its subscribers who injected $143 million into its coffers in 2014. And they can’t give some love to Edwards? (Money is an acceptable substitute for love in certain cases.)
Edwards did a one minute video for AOL (found on YouTube) where he explained his part of how the “You’ve got mail” phenomenon started. That video is approaching 200,000 views.
Which brings us to the second view. Understanding that Edwards is 67 now, but was around 40 when he did the recording, his wife worked for the company. Did he have no business sense at all? At its infancy, America On Line (which was the company name before Time-Warner got its hands on it) was the default Internet service. Was he being a nice guy or was (and still is) some gullible man who fails to understand the value of his services? Based on the 2012 video he did with no apparent compensation, he has learned nothing. The AOL YouTube channel is 99% likely to be monetized, so the company continues to make money off of his time.
Elwood Edwards may be the perfect example why Millennials and other digital natives think old people are technology-challenged or just plain stupid when it comes to the world of intellectual property. He might like driving for Uber. It might be a happy choice rather than a survival necessity.
In the Inside Edition video he seems naively happy about only getting $200 from his intellectual property. While not everything is about money, when you’re dealing with a company it should always be about getting paid the value of your services. There are probably people every day who think they are being “good employees” or “making a difference” by sharing their ideas that lead to significant profits for the company. Just don’t expect a voice message that says, “You’ve got a check in the mail!”
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