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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..."
Is a very small price to pay for free content. Besides, with portals like Google news, if there is a story you are interested in, there is a good chance that several other media outlets have written a similar article.
I just wonder what Margaret Thatcher would think about purportedly living in Beverly Hills...
So I'm not the only non-beverly hills type who enters 90210 as a zip code? Heck I don't even live in the USA.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
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.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Remember how Radio Shack used to always ask for your name/address/etc. whenever you bought anything? I could buy a germanium diode for $1 and get asked the same thing as if I bought a $1000 computer. Registration for news content is like making people key in their address to buy a newspaper from a vending machine. It's just completely ridiculous and unnecessary.
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new t-shirts
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I still resent having to register for newspaper sites. I don't need to register to pick one up at the newsstand, why should I for the site? Demographics blah blah blah but its not like the Chicago Tribune is going to start covering Denver news if a bunch of people from Colorado start reading it. They're going to be about Chicago, no matter who reads it.
I'm just glad google news has a partnership where you dont have to register when you use their links.
Moo.
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
It exists, and is called Passport. There was a hue and cry over it because people were worried about a centralized source of information in control of Microsoft about who they are and where they're going.
Even if you fake the information, it'd be like a super cookie. The best way if he's concerned about privacy is the current way -- stop the computer from broadcasting its IP address everywhere he goes and give a different piece of fake information to every website.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Maybe, but I don't even see advertising on the Internet. I tune it out, like, say, Yanni in an elevator. I also don't understand why publishers aren't more concerned about the integrity of their data -- unless, of course, all they care about is the illusion of accuracy.
That is EXACTLY all they care about- the illusion that they can target the ads properly, so that they can charge more money for "targeted advertising".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
There's no 'idea' for the internet.
There's a bunch of computers all linked together. If people want to give away information they can. If they want to charge for it, they can try to do that too.
My Journal
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
I just plug the desired URL into google and follow the link. That never fails, bugmenot seldom works.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
if I go to a site where I don't want to register (vast majority of them),I *don't*, I don't even use any phony info, I just skip it, and they lose a potential viewer and customer maybe, but I WOULD check off a few boxes indicating any type of ads that I wouldn't mind having on the page. I'm a normal guy, some gadgets and services interest me, I *might* go visit some companys webpage from an ad, just not ads that have zero relevance. Let ME pick, then you don't have to guess! Just give me a quick list to scan, I make my selections, then poof on to the content. No registering needed then, no cookies needed, no transfer of email address, no hard feelings.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They are after all driven by the number of eye balls that grace their sites.
Common misconception -- they are driven by the number of dollars that advertisers are willing to pay to get their message into some number of eye balls.
Online advertisers don't care as much about reaching the widest audience possible as they are about reaching the segment of the audience most likely to result in sales. A site operator can make more money with 10,000 users he knows everything about than he can with 10,000,000 users he knows nothing about.
Using Bug Me Not will likely help a lot. When the sites realize that they can't control logins and they have dozends, hundreds or even thousands logged in with the SAME info, they'll know it's not helping them in any way. What'll happen next remains to be seen, but I doubt they'll pull content, it's too ingrained into people's expectations anymore.
All news.google.com needs to be perfect is an option to simply filter out all of the (subscription) articles.
Michael
Right now in Minneapolis you can get 13 weeks of the StarTribune for $1.00 a week. $13 for ~3 months of the weekly paper. To buy it from the paper box or the store will run you 50 cents a copy. Now even at the higher rate I don't see 50 cents as actually paying for the content. I would hazard a guess that the
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Even if only 25% of registrations are relatively accurate, that's still 25% better targeting of ads than purely random. The papers know this, the advertisers know this, and the pricing of ads reflects this.
Can I have my 5 minutes reading this article back?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
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.)
I've heard that the following makes for a good fake name and address to use:
Alan Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Drive
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
Now for other sites, I would probably avoid depending on the amount and quality of content. I would certainly not waste the time to register for my local paper's website or something of similar value to me. If you don't think getting access to the nytimes for free is not worth the "hassle" of registering, boycott the nytimes. Otherwise, don't complain.
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
The problem is that bugmenot-type services work better the more people use them -- having one such service is ten times as good as having ten individual services. That means it's centralized, and that means it's vulnerable. Stopping such services in theory is difficult, but stopping any particular such service is easy:
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.
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.
Does that sound feasible?