Damn You, AOL Welcome Screen!

Is there ever a link from the AOL Welcome Screen that delivers the payoff? I've kept an AOL account for many years (my whole family uses it) and from time to time, I log onto it to use Instant Messenger. Yes, I know I could download IM separately, but I'd rather not have that piece of nagware on my system, thankyouverymuch.

Every once in a while, when I log in, I find something on the Welcome Screen that might interest me. Usually it's a content feature, like today's "Is Sith Not The End? Lucas Reveals The Future." But AOL never deep-links to the content. Clicking on that story, I might expect to be delivered to an interview with Lucas in which he hints at more movies after Episode III. Instead, I end up in some generic Star Wars content area on Moviefone and have to search around for what attracted me there in the first place.

This happens almost every time I click on a Welcome Screen link, and now I have the expectation that I'm going to have to do a significant amount of digging to find what was originally touted.

Makes me wonder how much of AOL's traffic consists of pageviews from people stumbling around their content trying to find stuff that was touted on the Welcome Screen...