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The Rise Of Reg-Only Media
cswiii writes "Following up his article a few weeks ago about the NY Times' loss of prominence across the online medium (previously discussed on /.), Adam Penenberg returns with a much wider assault on the
lurch towards reg-only content by Big Media as a whole. I just wonder what Margaret Thatcher would think about purportedly living in Beverly Hills..."
It needs to change, and soon.
I'm tired of registering at every news site I visit. With the populatiry of sites like Fark and Slashdot, I no longer go to only one news site - I visit articles in newspapers in Arizona, Australia, Germany, Maine, in addition to my usual 3 - The Washington Post, the Seattle P-I, and the BBC World News.
I don't mind registering for my usual 3. I do mind registering when I want to read a single article in the Boston Piccayune. This makes me give up, and go somewhere else.
An accepatable compromise is to make registration necessary after reading 5 or so articles, instead of for all articles at that site. After all, do their local advertisers really care about someone who is miles away?
Tepp
Seems this guy fromWired has taken cues from Poynter Online (http://www.poynter.org/). They've been discussing this exact topic for weeks already.
Before bugmenot, how many fake registrations did everyone make to NYTimes for instance? I know they have a few dozen fakes from me.. How inaccurate is their data? Do they know this? Or are they just assuming that 99% of their users are really from zipcode '12345'?
Whenever I go to a newspaper or other media site to read an article and they demand registration, the odds are really good that someone has already registered a 'shill' account with some predictable username and password. Often [site]user@[site].com, with the password [site].
One day, the time will come when they'll start comparing IP addresses against the registrar of any given account, but until then, I don't bother with my own accounts anymore. To be frank, I can't even remember what I used to sign up (once upon a time) for the LA Times.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
>Why do you expect them to give it to you and get nothing in return?
This issue here is that people are giving them information, but its faked information. So if its invalid information, how good is it? Why even have registration anymore if there is nothing for publishers to gain from it?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All news.google.com needs to be perfect is an option to simply filter out all of the (subscription) articles.
Michael
This likely the case as most media outlets primarily run wire stories to begin with. The only unique content is in the editorials.
Of course, they're also giving you the news without asking for 50 cents, either... Registration is the "price" you pay for full access to the online newspaper. Is that too much? Fine, then don't read it... but don't adopt some holier-than-thou attitude just because the newspaper (gasp) asks for something back before it hands over its content.
It's different than that. I'd gladly pay 25 cents a day for the Washington Post. But, I'm in Seattle. They don't distribute there. Or rather they only distribute the Sunday Paper - a week late. Bah!
I'd gladly PAY to get the regular version of the Washington Post. Unfortunately that's not an option. But I know I'm not the only one who's moved away and wants to read their local paper.
Tepp
which are being replaced by Blogging.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Nope. Not true. They manage to get funding because they can show advertising company A that they have plenty of their potential clientel signed up on their system; something you told them by signing up and either filling in options, OR not filling in options. All information is worth something in an age of.. gasp information. It's pure currency.. and can be converted to the real stuff simply by a marketing drone. Not to mention, just the number of people registered with real emails will be a very interesting fact to anyone willing to buy that email list off them. And not, not necessarily for spam. Cross reference, anyone? People are doing amazing things with data mining, and the tendency with corps is to push the limits of legality.. to know the law, and work around it until someone calls foul. So, go ahead, sign up. Not me. I wait for someone else to post a login, a copy of the article, or I read other sources and come to my own conclusion. I'm not going to work for some short sighted companies opinion. One they most likely handed the reporter, anyhow.
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Thank god they have stopped that ... I complained my ass off everytime I went in there. It was such a hastle.
... lets say, new breaks. They make you answer close to 15 questions. Phone number, email address, mailing address, then the questions that would make sense about the product I was looking at.
... I was asked the same questions again. I told them not to put me in there computer, they refussed. They said its not possiable to even open the register without it. So, of course ... I gave them info such as:
... I told them that was the only info I was going to give them.
... but I was working on a friends car!
... guess what ... I have yet to vist there site since the first time I went there that forced me to sign up. Like many other say, they can do what they want in order for me to get there free content. Ok, fine ... but I get my news from other free sites. Why do I need them ? Hell, they can start charging for all I care ... I will still get my news from elsewhere. Its no skin off my back.
I remeber one time I was on a job site 3 hours away, they were the only place around, I had to run in for a screw driver. They asked me 9 million questions, and even more since I wasn't from the area. I explained to them that I was working and needed to hurry back to work. They told me that they can't sell me anything without that information.
After that, I called rs everyday for 3 weeks bitching about it. I stopped going to rs for a few years after that.
Now, Strauss auto does this. They go a step futher. If you call on the phone to ask a price on
When I went into the store to buy it
Joe Smith
123 Main St
Sometown, NJ 05555
(732) 555-1212
eat@joes.com
They bitched about it
Now, I understand WHY they ask you SOME of the info. They ask your phone number so they can track what cars you own. Thats great and all
I have called there corperate office quite a few times, with no result so far. Needless to say, I no longer shop there.
As far as NY Times goes
until (succeed) try { again(); }
One effect may be to encourage more readership of Government-funded news sites. That's fine, as long as they're not all from the same government. Google News frequently has links to Xinhua, the BBC, the Voice of America, and Al-Jazeera. None require registration.
It's worth reading all four of those. If all four have roughly the same take on some event, the info is probably correct. If they don't, news manipulation may be going on.
(It's also amusing to read the Jerusalem Post, which is Israel's equivalent of Fox News.)
And i think making people pay for it is even worse... It's just a pain sometimes to have to register to see news and stuff.
Registering is a pain.
Paying, is not a pain. I'd gladly pay for unhassled access to my few favourite papers. I'm a firm believer in supporting what you enjoy. I pay for Red Vs Blue, for example. But at the BBC, or at the Washington Post, paying for online content is not an option.
Instead, every 60 days, they harass me about telling them my age, gender, sexual preferences, virginity score, geek score, pet's geek score.... UGH.
Tepp
If you see a link on Slashdot or Fark for an interesting news story on the newspaper for a city you don't live in, the advertisements on the website (their key source of revenue, far and away surpassing paid subscriptions of any kind) will likely not be relevant to you, as they are tailored for local readers. And since you're just flying by, you're going to ignore the ads anyhow.
You will click the link, read the story (and probably not even notice the newspaper that is reporting it), and then click "back" when you're done.
You are not entitled to access the website free of any kind of hinderances like registration -- ESPECIALLY if the likelihood of you clicking on an advertisement is infinitesimally small. The "Boston Picayune", as it were, is not responsible in any way for shelling out for bandwidth and a web staff so that you can read neat news stories without compensating them in any way whatsover.
audioLibre - freedom of music
Ads are the most important source of revenue for almost all media outlets. The larger the readership of a particular media outlet, the more they can get in ad revenue. That is why magazine subscriptions are so low compared to the newstand price ($20 for a year vs $5 an issue for quite a few magazines) -- they really want you as a subscriber so they can provide some solid circulation figures to paying advertisers.
I assume the same logic is at work for online news sources as well. You'd be surprised how many people give their real info when registering. Yeah sure, wannabe rebel Slashdot readers might put in junk for the info, but I'm sure that most people who want to read the New York Times don't really mind giving a little bit of personal info beforehand.
From a former employee:
As annoying as that was, it was a critical part of Radio Shack's business. Giving a correct name and address would just get you a flyer every month. About 20% of the months business would be people coming in grasping that flyer looking for stuff.
Radio Shack employees are/were commissioned sales people. The address thing was used to build your business. The idea is you don't goto the Shack, you go see Jason, Bob, Steve...whoever @ the Shack. When people balked at giving name and addresses over purchases, you told em what was being done with them: Company mailing list for a flyer.
Enter the computer. RS employees are tracked on dolalr per ticket and were tracked on name and address percentage. The computer didn't care if the purchase was $1.00 or $1,000 dollars. If you fell below 90% Names and addresses, you were in trouble.
The point is, as annoying as that policy was - it brought back many customers. Then Radio Shack started policies that created higher turns on employees and then they had to can the policy...but thats a different story. The registration emails are supposed to generate more subscribers for these papers and we have to see from the financials at the papers if the strategy is working. (I doubt it.)
-Electrawn
Why can't these big news sites do something like that? Track what you read with a cookie and give you ads that relate to the content you're interested in? The NYT would see that I read lots of tech articles, and could hawk computers at me, while giving ads for dictionaries to someone who does the crossword every day. The technology obviously exists, and all it does is connect a browser with a set of preferences, not a person.
As it is, all the NYT knows about me is that Blonzo T. Yermalloy lives in Anytown, PA. (I live on 1234 No. Fucking way.) How does that help at all? Especially when compared to the alternative?
Another one bites the dust
Rumors of "the NY Times' loss of prominence across the online medium" have been greatly exaggerated. The current paper issue of _Wired_ includes a foldout graph of hundreds of (mostly unnamed) blogs, ranked by "inbound links" count, indicating the amount of traffic flow from the blog to the "web" sites it "logs". (Tellingly, the feature itself is missing from Wired's website issue.) The NYT is #1, at about 19K links, beating #2 CNN (at about 17K links) by over 10%. Slashdot is #5 at about 9K links (also exceeded by BBC News and the Washington Post); the counts fall off pretty steeply after the first 50 of the 2000 they claim to graph. So Wired's editors show their usual self-contradictions, and the NY Times is both the most influential "blog" on the Net, and no longer prominent on the Net. Sounds like the media biz as usual: controversial for being controversial, and never so wrong as when it reports on itself.
--
make install -not war
-
What'll happen once sites catch on? They'll hire someone like me to spend half an hour writing a script that queries bugmenot for logins to their site, and disables those accounts. Making bugmenot useless won't be very hard.
I suspect this would become an arms race, Bugmenot would find a way to block such things (robots.txt files would probably be ignored but IP access lists wouldn't be hard) and would end up costing the media sites more than it's worth.-
Perhaps what we need is a more anonymous version of Passport -- a site that knows how to sign up automatically to a large number of free-reg-required sites, with information that you give it one time. Then when you want to read the New York Times, you go to RegItForMe.com and say "please create an account at [www.nytimes.com] with my (possibly fake) info," which doesn't take any longer than using bugmenot. This way the pan-internet super-cookie privacy concerns of Passport are neatly avoided -- as far as each reg site knows, you're using a local account with them. RegItForMe.com knows which sites you've requested a login for, but not when or how often you go.
Well I already have something similar but it's not a site, it's called AI Roboform. I can use it to quickly fill in my info (even have a bogus info file to use for reg sites) and I control it completely so I trust it. I still use Bugmenot when I can simply because I don't feel like taking the time to reg with bogus info on my own.-
Does that sound feasible?
It's feasible but it won't solve the root problem -- people don't want to give out their personal info to any site that doesn't have a legit reason for having it. Advertising demographics is NOT a valid reason for requesting personal info, demographics can be gathered by a signup that doesn't require a person's name, address, etc. If they want to know location just asking for a zip code should be enough for most demographics. If your advertisers wants to know down to the street address, well you should perhaps look for a more realistic advertising partner, they do exist.The thing that amazes me is the same sites that want to require registration and ask for everthing short of your blood type are also mostly the sites running stories about identity theft online regularly. Quite a gap there, on one hand warn people to never share their info online except when absolutely necessary, then require the people you're wanting to read the article to give up that info to read it.
Volunteer personal info, because targetted ads are more pleasant and useful than scattergun ads! (think Google adwords and Amazon suggestions).
This is an incentive for readers to volunteer personal information, at the level they are comfortable with - this self-selected data is more accurate.
I'm seeing ads that know I'm in Melbourne - and I pay more attention to them). This is key to Google's revenue model (Adwords targetting), and one of the great promises of the internet. Amazon's profile of your interests is seen as a benefit - I haven't heard complaints of that as an invasion of privacy.
Registration is not equivalent to purchase price, as that price covers printing/distribution, which are not incurred by internet editions (acknowledgment: the parent poster's insight)
The key is to let the user *choose* the level of personalization - eg: my city, but not my name or my income. This results in *much* more accurate data.... BUT news providers can not afford to value accuracy until their advertisers value it - until then, it's a waste of their effort.
I think the industry is too immature at present for advertisers to worry about accuracy... they are concerned with more basic stuff, like popularity of the website, and converting leads into sales.... "Does this thing actually work?" it's *still* a whole new ballgame for most advertizers. Accuracy is definitely second to these basics.... Once accuracy is valued, evidence of it will be required (but not at first - initially, voluntary data is self-evidently more accurate than bugmenot data etc).
sig without a cause
I've registered for the New York Times, Washington Post, the Belo conglomerate (Dallas Morning News etc.). These sites ask for email address and a small amount of info. Yes, it is annoying, but I can live with it.
But check out the registration for the Miami Herald. They want:
But even if you do not opt in to receive emails for any "newsletters", "special deals" or "discount" emails, the fine print says that:
Come on now, I love Dave Barry, but there is no way I'm going to give them permission to spam me!
If you want the NY Times content without having to give up any information, then hustle down to the newsstand and actually buy a copy.
:-) I heard a talk from the DoubleClick CEO a while back where he went into this and the dollars spent by companies like Ford, Pepsi, etc. The dollars those companies are willing to pay per impression on the internet are a tiny fraction as those in other media (TV being the largest.)
This has nothing to do with content and all to do with advertising.
FYI, the NYT doesn't really make any money off the newsstand price - that's eaten up in printing and distribution. They make all their money on ads.
For some bizzare reason, advertisers are willing to advertise without all the detailed market info on radio, television, magazines, newspaper, billboards, etc. but feel it's required on the internet. Just because something is possible doesn't make it required. I know full well why they do this - trying to get the best impact from ad dollars. It doesn't mean that I buy into it (no pun intended.
...(at least read the last paragraph)
Has anyone here received a phone call, usually around dinner
time, where there was nobody there?
Recently, I went to the Blockbuster I usually go to and when I
went to check out, this not-very-nice person says I can't rent
anything because my phone number is 'no longer valid.' Well, I
begin telling her that I removed my land line service and was
only using my cell phone and I was not going to give her my cell
phone number. Well she starts on about how they need a
number and I realize that it had only been 4 days since my
turning off service! I then interrupt her blabbering and ask her
loudly and forcibly, how did they know my phone had been
disconnected so soon after the fact. I then asked if Blockbuster
was one of the companies that used robots to call people in the
evening, just to see if the phone number works. She then
looked down at the floor and said she don't really know about
that. I told her Blockbuster could kiss my ass and that I would
just go to one of the many other Blockbuster outlets and ask
about it.
So, I go to this other Blockbuster and get the same DVD and go
check out like normal. Well, this guy checks me out no problem,
so no I'm confused...
So, after several weeks of going to this Blockbuster, I go just the
other day, go ring up, and goddamnit if it's not the same bitch
from the other store telling me my phone number's not valid! She
remembers me the same time I remember her and I start going
off on the whole robot phone call thing and I'm not giving her
my number and apparently she was the only one that
cared about it anyway. She says she's filling in for the manager
for two weeks, and she let me check out w/o a phone number,
but when the manager returns she'll ask about it.
So, long story short, I hate those fnck!ng robot phone callers
and that's why I disconnected my phone. And I have found out
some of the reason why they do it. The robots call every few
days to make sure you are still there.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
This is like the path Microsoft will use to beat Google. Microsoft has no problem making deals with other companies, and locking their own content. So over time, big media may disappear from Google, but it will appear on Microsoft Search.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Perhaps we just need a simpler, uniform method to provide the critical info. Rather than having to type in 5 different boxes and pick from a list of states, wouldn't it be easier to have a simple alphanumeric code? For instance, 2-letter state, 2-digit year-of-birth, 1-letter sex (for a man in Texas born in 1976, the code would be tx76m). After a few days, it would become as natural as typing a password, and provides too little enough information to get up-in-arms about, but is enough for most advertisers. It would be easier for both user and content provider than having a username and password, and gets nearly as much accomplished.
G
The problem is that it is not a fair trade. Their one article, locked behind a registration barrier and available elsewhere most likely, becomes outdated 24 hours later. My personal information does not and is much more valuable than that soon-to-be-outdated article.
Then don't go to registration sites. They do not have a monopoly on news, you know. That is the whole point. You have a right to choose. You DON'T have a right to tell others how to do business.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!