Specs of Salons Subscription System

legLess writes "Scott Rosenburg, Salon's VP of operations, wrote an interesting article for Web Techniques about Salon's subscription system. It goes into a fair amount of technical detail (JavaBeans and JSP on Linux for login and authentication; Perl, HTML::Mason and MySQL (CD: and oracle) for content). He also talks about their subscription numbers, what drove them to do it, and their plans for the future (technical and operational). A little fluffy, but still a good read."

Comments

In-house vs. outsourcing

[DouglasA]

I read this article when the mag arrived, and was mostly fascinated by their decision to build it all in-house. Two or three years ago, they most likely would have thrown a ton of money at another company to develop the whole system. They would have gotten something that was not exactly what they wanted, and no doubt three months late (at least). Companies finally seem to be realizing that they need to make better use of the staff they have, and that even adding a few programmers or other employees can be cheaper than hiring outside developers. That's what I'm seeing at my company now, anyway, and others I know.

As a subscriber...

[Ars-Fartsica]

I think Salon has done the right thing. They were doomed otherwise - their stock was getting throttled (why they ever went public is beyond me) and advertising was flopping. Salon has good content - in the past critics could rightly claim that it was simply a shill for the Democratic party, but it has taken on a much more even tone. The sex content and the other bonus material is worthless, so don't subscribe if you think you are going to see nude hotties.

In terms of their technology, I think managing two page management technologies (JSP and Perl/Mason) would get a little tired, and is likely unnecessary. While JSP might not be fast enough to handle the Mason-generated pages, you can certainly use Perl to transact credit cards if you want.

From previous postings on this site, it seems that Slashdot will be going to subscription route as well. I think its a good idea. The quality of posts will probably improve (the best posters appear to be the /. addicts who would likely subscribe), and there would be capital in place to provide extensive services on top of what is already here.

Re:As a subscriber...

[foobar104]

From previous postings on this site, it seems that Slashdot will be going to subscription route as well. I think its a good idea.

I'm all for improved discourse, and I'd be disappointed if Slashdot had trouble staying afloat, but I don't agree that a subscription-based revenue model would improve the quality of the site.

Not too long ago, Salon's "Table Talk" message board was a great place to find reasonably intelligent talk. There were no trolls, and it seemed that most everybody could spell.

Then, sometime in the past year but I'm not sure when, Salon took their message board to a subscription-only model. Anybody can read, but only paying subscribers can post. It's not expensive, either; something on the order of six bucks a month, I think?

The result? The boards that I used to frequent on Table Talk are now ghost towns. Tumbleweeds and cow skulls, and Yul Brynner wandering around dressed all in black.

I, too, used to think that taking Slashdot to a read-for-free, pay-for-post model would be a good thing, keeping some of the riffraff out. But I don't think so any more.

Premium only content - mark it

[cowboy junkie]

As I recall, when Salon first implemented their premium content, they didn't mark what content was premium, but instead when you viewed the story it would give you the first couple of paragraphs then say that you had to subscribe to read the rest. This is a big mistake, as it really makes non-subscribers resent the wasted click, and I'm glad they finally wised up and starting marking everything clearly as premium.

I had no problem subscribing to Salon, though, because these guys are the real deal. While I love sites like /. that point to noteworthy stories on the web, Salon is one of the only true purveyors of Internet journalism that provides stories worth pointing to. They have top-notch folks reporting and provides commentary on the whole spectrum of news.

6$ a month, now, another good move from Salon.

[clarkie.mg]

This month, Salon launched a monthly subscription program for 6$.

Reading the article, I have to give credit to the way Salon deal with their readers.

1. Even the free site is not overwhelmed by ads like those flash based ones that run around the page on wired, or those poping pages on yahoo.

2. The price for the site is really low, compared to the price you would pay for a daily newspaper. They understood that internet users CAN pay for content but at a reasonable price.

3. They give premium content, not only ads-free stories.

Thumbs up, Salon.

Salon != Slashdot...

[corky6921]

After reading this article, I begin to see why it will be doubly tough for Slashdot to make the jump to subscription-based revenue.

The biggest problem I see with Slashdot is that Slashdot doesn't have a Cringely or a Coursey or a Dvorak. Sure, Slashot has Jon Katz, but I just don't find his articles as readable as a Cringley column or a Dvorak rant.

I see the real difference between Slashdot and Salon on a couple of other fronts as well. Besides not having several columns by intersting authors, most of Slashdot's content is made interesting by the readers, not by the story submitters. Personally, I am horrified by both the obvious lack of attention given to grammar, as well as the oft-biased one-liners added by the story submitters. Finally, although it has gotten better in recent times, Slashdot seems to crash a lot... even more than an overloaded MySQL database would suggest.

For Slashdot to take a viable community and turn it profitable, the story editors do a lot more than Salon did. The fact remains that Salon's content is mostly unique, whereas Slashdot's content (in terms of story submissions) is mostly regurgitated. Salon's readers will pay because it's hard to find Salon-like articles anywhere else. On the other hand, I can honestly say that if ZDNet had a moderation system, I'd only rarely visit Slashdot. ZDNet's columnists keep me entertained, and their news is grammatically correct and up-to-date because they pay people to go out and write it.

It all boils down to whether Slashdot can successfully differentiate itself from the hundreds of other "Cool Linux Stories" sites. In the end, what keeps Slashdot's readers coming back is the discussion and the attached moderation system. What remains to be seen is whether or not people will pay for that.

Re:what the fuck?

[Billly Gates]

The next version of the upcoming slashcode supports postgreSQL. Unlike mySQL, postgreSQL offers nested selects, transaction support, and ansi-sql 92 compliancy. Infact it may be the most sql-92 compliant database around. It may not be as fast as an embedded quick and ditry file system for internal programming jobs, which mysql was designed for. But postgreSQL is quite good as a standalone database. Of course nothing beats big iron databases like Oracle, DB2, Sybase and MS-SQL but if your on a tight budget postgresSQL will do wonders. ALso the next version should support replication which is essential in any enterprise level database. I believe MYSQl is qite behind in this. Why PostgreSQL is not the defacto poor man's database is beyond me. However in Japan all the linux magazines and books mainly only focus on PostgreSQL and the situation is reverse there. I believe www.phpbuilder.com did a test with postgreSQL and Mysql to see which was more scalable and PostgreSQL kicked ass.( I am too lazy to look up the url.)

RedHat chose postgreSQL for a reason and not mysql. Hmm I wonder why?

The web isn't commercial only

[WiggyWack]

I'm so tired of the whole "The free web is over" rants. Why do so many people think the commercial part of the web is the only part of the web? People have created content for free for a long, long, long time. Whether it be music, art, comics, poetry, literature, editorials, films, TV shows (yay for public access cable!), books, whatever... Many people are driven by ideas or creativity they just want others to pay attention to, without getting paid for it.

So the "Soon you'll have to pay for all your web content" chant really means "Soon you'll have to pay for all the web content dished up by commercial organizations." Good. I don't need it anyway.

The Internet is cool because all the free content that was out there to begin with can now be put online by anyone and viewed by anyone. So your underground newspaper, or garage band, or your off-the-wall comic strip has the potential to be viewed by a lot more people than just those in your town or school.

I don't care if I have to pay for content owned by AOL Time Warner or whoever. There's plenty of people out there who want me to look at their stuff for free. (gee, kinda like how the Internet used to be)

Re:The web isn't commercial only

[killthiskid]

I don't think the problem is lack of people willing to generate content, it's the fact that putting that content on the 'net requires bandwith, which, as has been pointed out, requires money. Bandwith has the further problem of not getting any cheaper.

Take spinsanity.org... great site, great weekly e-mail and for a long time, fairly small time. Now they are getting popular and getting press time, and now they are getting strapped for cash. They had to open up the path ways for people to make donations to pay for bandwith. They were perfectly happy to make the content for free... it's providing the content that is getting to them.

Pay-for-content fragments the audience

[YouAreFatMan]

I like Salon. I used to read Salon all the time. But they started putting 2/3 of their good articles on Salon Premium. I almost subscribed, but after a couple of weeks without it, I found I could live in a Salon-free world. Now I hardly ever visit it.

I used to use Encyclopedia Britannica once in a while. But now, I can't use it at all because it's a pay site. I can't justify paying a subscription when I might use it once or twice a month.

I currently pay to subscribe to one on-line content provider : Cooks Illustrated. Its worth it to me. Salon might be worth it to me, too, but I don't buy it. As more and more sites go pay-for-play, I'm not going to be subscribing to dozens of sites. 1) I am only a casual reader, and 2) even if I thought it was worth it, I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars a month to keep up with all the sites I visit.

And here's where it starts to break down: the (commercial) web can end up just like print media. Sure, any print publication could be subscribed to by everyone, but everyone is not going to subscribe to everything, or even one thing. So you have your subscribers, and you don't reach anyone else.

I know that Salon Premium pretty much drove me away from Salon. I accept that in the future, I will be much more limited web site availability. I'm willing to pay that price because all that casual content isn't worth the thousands of dollars it would cost to maintain subscriptions.

Micropayments, anyone?

more detailed interview on the subscription model

[Kraft]

here. Interview with COO Patrick Hurley from August this year. The interview is very "content provider" oriented and is a good read.

You can read it in the bathroom

[Jeremy Erwin]

For you information, one of the benefits of "Premium" is that you can download the daily issue as a pdf. Good for reading on the commute, or on the commode, perhaps?

$72 per year? For Salon?

[Animats]

That's a bit much. The online subscription to the Wall Street Journal is only $59 per year. And the WSJ has far more content, real content, created by reporters spread around the world. Salon is mostly columnists, and rather lightweight ones at that.

What might work is, say, a service that lets you buy topics, like "politics", "literature", or "entertainment industry news" for a flat fee, but covers a large number of publications. Like AdultCheck and PornoPass, but for people who read. The "adult verification systems" are commercially successful, unlike micropayment systems. As usual, the porno industry figures it out first.