AOL seems on the verge of going all-in on a plan to forego member revenue in favor of advertising revenue. Here’s a New York Times story, here’s a Business 2.0 story and here’s a Wall Street perspective from Minyanville.

I think Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital quoted in the Times story, nails it: “AOL is a brand in search of a strategy.” Their ad revenue is up, even though their percentage slice of the overall online ad pie is being nibbled away and they’re hemmoraging members like crazy. Giving away all their content for free (especially if they can genuinely leverage all the Time Warner properties) and focusing on ads seems like their best bet at this point, even if that bet means they’re playing a big blind of a coupla billion bucks in dialup and high-speed subscriber fees.

But what cards are the other players at the table — Google, Yahoo! and MSN — holding? And where will all the players be when the river card is turned for this hand?

Keith Olbermann has the best news show this side of The Daily Show. He also has the worst email newsletter signup process this side of Nigerian spammers.

By the time I was signed up, I had received five — count ’em five! — administrative emails from MSNBC.

(1) Subject line: “Command Confirmation Request.” A little strident in the subject line (no doubt it’s an I.T. person, not a marketer, writing that copy), but it makes sense. “To protect your privacy and deter hackers, we ask that you please verify your request by completing the following procedure…” The procedure is simply to reply and type OK in the body of the email. No problem, I can do that.

(2) Then I get an email with this subject line: “Message (“Please type your name after the name of the list,…”)” and this message: “Please type your name after the name of the list, as in: “SUBSCRIBE OLBERMANN Joe H. Smith”. Alternatively, if you want to subscribe anonymously, send the command: “SUBSCRIBE OLBERMANN Anonymous”. Your subscription will then be hidden automatically.” Hmmmm. Okay, if the subject line didn’t cause me to delete the mail, I guess this is easy enough to deal with.

(3) Another “Command Confirmation Request.” I’m feeling deja vu. Did my first request get accepted? Rejected? I type OK and cross my fingers.

(4) “Welcome to the MSNBC Keith Olbermann list” is the subject line of email number four. Whew! I made it! I bet Keith has something nice to say to me, like “Congratulations on completing the electronic obstacle course.” Sure enough, he does: “Welcome to MSNBC Keith Olbermann!” That’s it? That’s the entire body of the email? Well, that and this: “To remove yourself from this list simply go to [URL], select unsubscribe, enter the email address receiving this message, and click the Go button.” Huh? No real welcome message? No programming notes? No upsell to buy an Oddball DVD? No warm ‘n’ fuzzies? Sheesh! But for good measure, I’m not forgotten. Before long comes email number five.

(5) Yet another “Command Confirmation Request,” this one saying the following: “OK Confirming: SUBSCRIBE OLBERMANN Craig Peters You have been added to the OLBERMANN list.” Why, thank you.

Five emails, five places for something to go wrong, five links in the chain that could have broken. Above all, five opportunities to integrate the Countdown tone of voice into the process, all of them missed.

This is a horrible email signup system. If anyone at Countdown is asking why they don’t have more addresses on their email list, this is exactly why. It should be a simple confirmed opt-in process: Enter your email address, get a confirmation email as entertaining as Olbermann usually is, respond and voila!

If anyone could successfully subscribe to it, that is.

Takeaway for marketers: User experience counts. Big time.

The Web is full of all sorts of time wasters. Here’s a great one that will delight highbrow and lowbrow Web surfers alike.

(My thanks to Mark Evanier and his excellent NewsFromMe blog for pointing this one out.)

I really like the Miller Light “Man Laws” commercials. Their supporting Web site is excellent, incorporating blogging and user-generated content that has amassed more than 23,000 man laws, including this one: “Thou always compensate for very bad beer with expensive Internet ads.” Clearly they’re not worrying about editing public postings to their site. Good for them.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re going to venture into the user-generated content waters, remember that you can’t control everything. If you’re a control freak, stay on dry land.

JULY 25 UPDATE: Tom Daykin, who reports on the beer industry for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, stumbled across LOHAD and spoke to yours truly about the campaign for this article. Thanks, Tom.

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”
—Jonathan Swift