Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Turning Up The Heat On On-Line Registration

Posted by timothy on from the it's-easy-and-it's-required dept.

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "CNN is running a story on the growing number of print newspapers with on-line editions that are requiring registration. Apparently there are some folks out there who don't like this 'feature'! I found a few things interesting about the story: Privacy groups say it's a dangerous practice and promotes spam; I didn't realize people put real personal info into these things (110-year-old surgeons from Bulgaria named Mickey Mouse). About 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus, a figure that was much lower than I would have thought. Also mentioned in the story is a web site called BugMeNot.com, which lists 'communal' logins and passwords for on-line newspapers."

19 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. I'm disappointed in Taco by DCowern · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you go to BugMeNot.com and enter http://slashdot.org, you get:

    CmdrTaco
    password

    Sheesh, I'd expect better from him! ;-)

  2. I love online regestration.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but I imagine that 'joe@aol.com' probably doesn't...

    1. Re:I love online regestration.... by brgnever · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's why I use:
      @example.com
      @example.net
      @example.org
      (see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt )

      me@example.com works fine on most web pages :)

      brgnever

  3. BugMeNot days numbered? by Insomnia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course, now that BugMeNot has been publicized, how long until all these sites check that site often and just disable all accounts that ever get listed there?

    1. Re:BugMeNot days numbered? by yelvington · · Score: 5, Informative

      Others already have posted the obvious answer that newspapers make most of their money on advertising, not circulation. I'll add some precision. (I am a strategist for a newspaper company.)

      Three revenue drivers traditionally have been coequal for printed newspapers: Classified advertising, display advertising (the big ads on news pages), and circulation.

      However, circulation revenues are rapidly declining due to market pressures, and circulation costs (a problem of print distribution, but not of Internet distribution) consume more than circulation sales brings in.

      Display advertising has declined about 15 percentage points over the last couple of decades, largely due to retail sector consolidations and Wal-Mart (which does not advertise very much in newspapers). So newspapers are increasingly dependent on classified advertising ... which happens to work extraordinarily well on the Internet.

      The audience is moving from print to the Internet, so it is imperative that newspapers find ways to serve that audience online (and deliver advertising to it).

      On the Internet, the only business model that has been demonstrated to work for newspapers is the open, ad-supported model. The typical paid site gets something like 1.5 percent of the audience of the printed newspaper, while an open site may actually exceed the audience of the print product. So successful newspapers have open Web sites and rely on advertising for support.

      Successful newspapers have implemented classified advertising pricing strategies that harvest that Internet-generated value. The single most effective advertising program implemented by newspapers is the "Top Jobs" program originated at sfgate,, which lets key classified advertisers pay extra for exposure on regular site content pages.

      Regardless of what slashdot groupthink might dictate, the reality is that local retail banner and tile advertising also works. However, the Internet -- because of its potential global reach -- creates unique problems for local advertisers.

      Consider the Washington Post. Its advertising base is local. Its Web reach is global. If you think about that for maybe five seconds, you can see why they have implemented registration. They have to develop two completely independent ad sales strategies -- one based on a global audience (which is why they ask business questions of nonlocal registrants) and another based on a local audience. And they need to be able to target local advertising based on geographic information from registration and also national advertising based on the B2B questions from registration.

      It is an article of faith on slashdot that "everybody" lies on registrations. My own data shows under one percent falsification. Perhaps most people are not as dishonest as slashdotters. :-)

      As for the whine about "inevitable spam" ... please demonstrate where a newspaper has abused the email addresses provided by its users. No newspaper shares those addresses with advertisers. Every news company carefully controls the use of those email addresses -- even the Tribune Company, which requires that you consent to receive ad mail as a condition of site access, severely limits both the number and the nature of the emails. It would be bad business to do otherwise.

  4. philadelphia inquirer bogus percentage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    About 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus

    That percentage has just risen :)

  5. Alternatives easy to find by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I live in Austin. I used to read the Statesman online, but now they require registrations, and the damn thing asks for the password every single time.

    So, I read www.kxan.com instead. I think that no matter where I turn, I can find an equivalent article from a competitor. Even content such as what salon.com carries can be found elsewhere. Slate.com and theatlantic.com can give me lots to think about when salon.com's advertisements fail to run on Linux.

    So, no biggie. If they make it easy for me, I'm content to set myself up as a 99 year old woman from Ahzerbaijahn. But if they bug me twice about it, or if they fail to test their advertizing/authentication scheme with the browser that I choose to use, then I'll never visit their shithole again.

    So long, Austin American Statesman. You suck!

    --
    Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
  6. They WANT you to enter bogus info... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just a theory, of course, but I bet the newspapers could care less what info. you use to register, as long as you do. And if you register with a new name every time, even better-- that's twice the number of readers they can claim to have to their advertisers.

  7. The day they started subscriptions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The day the online LA Times started requiring subscriptions... ...I stopped reading the LA Times online.

    The day the online Washington Post started requiring subscriptions... ...I stopped reading the Washington Post online.

    Luckily, the NYTimes didn't require a valid email, once upon a time...

    There are still enough free sources of news on the Internet-- if some papers want to cut down on their advertising exposure and online circulation, fine. Screw 'em. There is no reason they need my name to send me their news and ads.

    1. Re:The day they started subscriptions... by timmyf2371 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Simple - if you want to read someone's content you abide by their rules.

      There is no reason they need my name to send me their news and ads

      Weird. Despite having been registered with the NYTimes for 2 years now, I've never received any communications from them be it news/spam/anything else nor has the email address I provided them been given to anyone.

      --

      Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
    2. Re:The day they started subscriptions... by dave1791 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ummmm... Why do people bitch about the beer not being free?

      What is the big deal? The washington post, nyt, etc are comercial operations and have to pay to keep the lights on. You can pay to read the newspaper in print or read it online for free provided you give them something in trade (i.e. account info).

      They have to pay those journalists and pay for the Reuters/AP feeds. If you want to read their stuff, be prepared to trade for it. $/ or info.

      If you want free beer, there are a million crappy blogs...

    3. Re:The day they started subscriptions... by digitalgiblet · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Cgenman said: "Would you read a newspaper if the newsstand man required a valid drivers license, and watched over your shoulder taking notes?"

      When you get the newspaper at the newstand you PAY for it with MONEY. The bulk of that cost goes to defray the cost of printing. A major daily paper has HUGE expenses that keep going up, yet they don't raise the price of a paper very frequently.

      The profits from a newspaper come from advertisers who are willing to pay a fair rate for print advertising because it works. So far most online advertising has failed to meet the expectations of advertisers, so they don't want to pay much for it.

      Newspapers know that the world is changing around them and they are trying to adapt. Are they making the right choices? Don't know. I don't like registering any more than anyone else, but I do know that if newspapers don't figure out how to make a LOT more money online, they will cease to exist. The trend is for anyone younger than say 45-50 to get their news online rather than from print. The good news is that it costs a LOT less to publish online (newsprint costs are soaring -- newsprint is the paper itself). The bad news is that the BULK of the jobs at a large daily paper are NOT reporters and editors, but printers and circulation people. That equals a ton of lost jobs in the future if newspapers go totally online.

      We're coming up on 10 years of large numbers of people actively using the Internet and we STILL haven't figured out a way to exchange money for information that people are willing to use that will generate enough money to make it worthwhile to provide that information. Yes I'm a capitalist. Yes I expect people provide goods and services only in exchange for SOMETHING that can be equated to money.

      It is basically a paradox. People pay for Internet service, so they figure everything out there should already be paid for, yet if you required ISPs to pay into a fund that was distributed amongst all web sites and services, each site would make microscopic revenues and would cease to operate.

  8. It's not 10%-15% of ALL registration information.. by Granos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They found that 10-15% of email addresses are bogus. This makes perfect sense, because most users who register probably figure that they need to recieve an e-mail to confirm registration, (even if you don't, as in the case of the Philadelphia Inquirer). If you look at Name/address/phone number/other personal info, then the amount of falsified data is probably at 85%+. Of course, there's no way to run a database queue to find out how much of that is fake, since they can't just count bounced e-mails. But to the companies e-mail is really all that matters anyway, so the fact that the other info is fake is moot.

  9. slashdot logins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    slashdot
    slashdot

    Works on quite a few sites.

  10. Information poisoning by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    They call it "Information Poisoning" and are absolutely baffled why on earth anyone would ever practice it. Just for useful reference for other peoples information poisoning efforts I have an easy one to remember

    Young America, MN 55555

    This will match the zip code to the city and will pass those systems that try to verify against bogus data.

    They don't care about the people who refuse to sign up, this is meaningless to them. But if they get enough bogus data, those databases become significantly devalued.

    And to whoever has that bob@jones.com email address, I offer my sincerest apologies.

  11. fake reg by RTPMatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    bout 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus, a figure that was much lower than I would have thought.

    I thought the same thing, but almost every time i ask a nontech-savvy person, they tell me they put their real info in. Also, many of these people will also put your email in to those 'send this to 5 friends for $1 off!' type deals. I have had to teach everybody in my family that when you do things like this it adds to spam. Some of them seem to think that its wrong to give fake information, or that you may be tracked down or something. people need to be educated about this stuff!

  12. Not true by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Informative
    In order to use the data they have to prove that it is true. Advertisers know all too well about falsified audience figures.

    They are not going to be too impressed with marketing data like this. If people can be proven to be lying about one thing in a survey then all the other data is suspect as well.

    Compare it with banners ads sold on number of shows, clicks AND sales. The first are insanely high but also easily faked. Clicks are slightly more reliable but any advertiser is really intrestted in the number of sales generated.

    So if your site can sell 1 billion views that is barely worth anything. If it can produce 100.000 clicks that might get you a few bucks. But generate 1000 sales and you are golden.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  13. related, disposable email by prockcore · · Score: 5, Informative

    For sites that require a valid email address for registration, there's an excellent site called www.dodgeit.com

    You don't need to create an account, just invent one.

    Then go to the site and you (and anyone) can look at the mail sent to that address. Go try it out, go to the site, and punch in "ihatespam" for example and you can see all email sent to ihatespam@dodgeit.com

  14. Re:get over it by mabinogi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, how much information they want is not your call to make , it's definitely theirs.

    But it is entirely your call whether or not to give that information, or forego the use of their service.

    They all know damned well that just becase they ask for information doesn't mean they'll get it. They're also probably aware that their readership will go down proportional to how much information they want, so they make a judgement as to how valuable that information is to them.
    You make that same judgement....

    Also, the parent was not equating incorrect information with piracy, he was comparing...there is a big difference. His comparison was not entirely without merit. You can choose to ignore the nag screens on Shareware, and continue using it for free, just as you can enter false data in the registration pages of a service, therefore getting it for free. In both cases the providers of the software or the service are aware that this will happen, and are counting on enough people to be honest to make it worthwhile. But being one of the expected dishonest people does not make you any less dishonest....

    --
    Advanced users are users too!