- November 15, 2010 7:17 am
The growing trend in news these days is a paywall. To people used to the wide open internet from their younger years, it’s certainly a wake up call when you’re faced with a login page asking for a credit card just to read the news. But there are worse things in life. But if you’re a 3 UK cellular customer, things will be great — for the next three months at least.
The Times and 3 UK have reached a deal to bring the entire online edition of the newspaper to mobile users free of charge. Where it gets interesting is how the post-promotional pricing differs. For 3 post-paid/contract customers, it will cost £2/week. However, pre-paid/PAYG need only top up every 30 days to keep the free news flowing. Pre-paid/PAYG certainly have their perks.
Interested 3 UK customers have until March 31st, 2011 to get in on the offer.
We’ve talked about good ‘ol (way over the hill) Rupert Murdoch. In a more general light, I’ll commend Mr. Murdoch as he has built up a media giant. At the same time, it is an extremely backwards looking and technologically retarded giant. It’s no secret to anyone in the tech world, this man hates the very mention of the word “free”. To him, everything should come with a price, paywalls erected everywhere, and the free flowing internet turned into a locked down shell of what it once was. Thankfully the many powers and sources that make up the internet aren’t this stupid.
By now you’re probably fishing for a reason for even mentioning this right? Continue on…
Also common knowledge now, Apple announced the “Jesus Pad” last week. While it wasn’t as great as I thought it would be, it will no doubt be a pretty big player in the ereader market and further bolster the move to all digital reading. Reading happens to be the very business Rupert Murdoch deals with on a daily basis. Wondering exactly what this old media tycoon thinks of the iPad and other ereaders?
They’re lifeless without good content…
I pretty much agree with this statement. If there’s nothing to read or be entertained by, why purchase a device to entertain? The problem is he is implying that only NewsCorp and paid content will be of any worth and make the various ereaders userful. He’s got it all wrong. While good content can and does play a small part in decision making process of what type of ereader to pick up, the general public cares far more for features of the actual hardware — not the content provider.
There are thousands of news sources in the world. If one high and mighty news provider thinks they have the prettiest smelling shit in the world and locks their content behind a wall so tight Jesus himself would have a tough time breaking through, well, the readers and dollars will go elsewhere.
Best learn this before it’s too late ‘ol chap, ok?
Anyone feel like he’s destroying the newspaper business with false hopes of more money by alienating readers and locking up content?
AlleyInsider
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Getting your content onto the internet is quite the challenge in todays online world. For one, there is millions of websites all vying for your attention, each with their helping of information waiting to be devoured by your hungry eyes and minds. With so many sites to weed through, search engines are easily one of, if not the most important tool for crawling through the internet. So why would you want to purposely block yourself from being found? Perhaps that’s a good question for Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. His intentions of ridding his services of being searchable via search engines (Google in particular) as well as general distaste for anything free has pretty much earned him the image of someone stuck in the past, unable to adapt, and ultimately a failure in the digital realm of the world. Accusations of such aren’t exactly child’s play as the world is moving digital. Knowing how to manipulate this new world for your benefit is the difference between being a giant and out of business.
In the case of Mr. Murdoch, he sadly shows us that time and time again he has no clue how to use or market himself or his businesses on the internet. His latest comments and thoughts in a recent interview with Sky News Australia (video inside) clearly show he is taking his services and content in the wrong direction…
Oh boy. If you want to see a good form of irony, this is it folks. China is accusing Google of censorship. Never mind the fact that China has made headlines countless times for blocking numerous websites and social networking services above and beyond what is necessary. Though, censorship is never necessary. I’ll admit that many countries, the U.S. included, blocks sites here and there and manages to stay out of the public spotlight. But I’m sure we all know the difference between China’s censorship and everyone else’s censorship. Why all the commotion and sudden stampede of black pots and kettles running down the street?
It all has to do with a recent report written by China’s main newspaper, “The People’s Daily” accusing Google and their planned online book store of infringing on Chinese copyrights. For the last few days, the report on TPD’s website has been flagged as “malicious” in nature by Google and is seemingly unaccessible. Baidu, the 60+% top dog search engine in China reports no such problem.
So China is all upset because they are getting the ‘ol censorship stick smacked across their face? (If that is even the case at all…) Irony at it’s finest. So let’s take a poll: Is Google (A) proactively flagging and blocking The People’s Daily report/page, or is this (B) all some big mishap?
Leave it inside.
The Inquirer
When trying to grow your business, especially one in this digital age with competitors cropping up by the hundreds if not thousands, shooting yourself in the foot with poor business decisions doesn’t seem like a very good way to continue rolling in the dough. For Newsday (which is owned by Cablevision) a paywall isn’t necessarily the best idea as many customers expect a free web portal, the way they are going about it is all wrong. The likely scenario would seem to be as such:
- Customers who already subscribe to Cablevision TV or Newsday print papers can access Newsday online for free.
- New customers who do not subscribe to either Cablevision or Newsday products will pay a $10/month fee
Seems reasonable for a paywall scheme does it not? Well, they got part of it right — current customers of Cablevision or Newsday do in fact get access to Newsday online for free. New to the Newsday online scene are ya? That’ll be $5 — per week. *rolls eyes*
Are they trying to kill themselves? If you block off new subscribers who simply don’t want Cablevision TV service or an actual Newsday print paper showing up at their door step by charging them for online access, they’re just going to go elsewhere. If your business — the newspaper industry — isn’t doing so hot, bringing in new customers to would seem like a pretty high priority. I guess Cablevision didn’t spend that long talking to newspaper industry sources when they originally purchased Newsday and admitted they had no idea on how to run a newspaper business. Mass defect coming soon.
TechDirt
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