compressive recombs…

undrinkable wainwright…

As many here know, Florida Today allows comments to their articles. If you go to an old school type forum and register with a valid email address. And while you can choose to be anonymous on Florida Today’s popular Watchdog blog (which uses Googl…

timetables british…

In a broader sense, when content is dependent on advertising dollars to be produced and delivered, it is influenced by the advertisers. This can cause the content to be about “safe” subjects — politically, culturally and socially — with points of view consistent with advertisers’. Even if publishers claim that their editorial is not influenced by advertisers, it can still result in curbing investments in content that is unique and appeals to more fringe demographics, leading to media homogeneity. Who of us is in the mainstream anyway? Don’t we all have unique characteristics and interests? Don’t demographic profiles just force us into classes that support advertising and that are clearly false? (How much of the advertising that you see, even direct advertising, is actually relevant to you?) Going this route would be more of a loss for consumers than shelling out a few dimes for interesting stuff.

So why do I think it’s good that the NY Times is freeing up content, specifically? Because the content *was* free, then it cost money. The charge for the content did not support its production (ostensibly). It was simply a troll under a bridge, collecting a fee because it could.

I’m glad to pay it to get rid of the ads and to get a few little extra features. I never clicked on any of their ads anyway, so both sites are probably making more money from me than they did with ads.

You give up your user experience if every thing is free. We all know how often we click ads. It will only be big organisations that can support business models based on adverting in the long run. And to be big you have to be, more or less, bemain steam and BOOOM back where we started. Content not really relevant to anybody, but watchable.

I hope paid content stays. More and more people are willing to pay to lose the ads if it also means they get a quality experience and quality content. Take for example wannakey.com. They have a really cool model that’s based on everybody being compesated for their role on the internet. And the model only allows quality content to surface. We need more companies like wannakey.com who allows people to be creative and interesting.

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Free content is clearly the only way to go. But I can’t help noticing that in the short term the Economist has done badly out of customers like me: keen enough to have paid a subscription, but not nearly rich enough to appeal to their typical advertiser.

Yes indeed! Legacy media is s-l-o-w-l-y getting the picture. It can include them but they’ll need to play by online rules.

Perhaps you need to re-think your comment in that ” all will fall ”

If that’s the case, why don’t we just all pack it in and conceed the entire web to Google ? Sometimes, I think that’s what the staff at TC proposes. I am amazed at all the rah rah crap for Google among all the TC staff anyway. Google makes money hand over fist with their advertising, but they are so arrogant and greedy, they think the only right applications are Google apps and services. What they don’t develope, they buy, clone, copy, or steal. They have the money to put a lof of young entrepreneurs out of business and they do just that; everytime they clone something. They found all the info to do it with their snooping crawlers. In their eyes, it’s all for their taking. They surely HOPE your thoughts will ring true. Maybe that’s how you retire, un-voluntarily. I wish everyone on the internet charged for every service and app out there. Then at least we get rid of all the junk.

Other than that, content should never need to be paid for per view or per article, that’s just ridiculous. Likely, highly authoritative/scientific content may still be pay per article, but that type of content never hits the critical mass to be seen like this. Only big databases of content should need a paid membership….

As for paid content, does everyone agree that membership content is good still? or is all pay-for-content going to become obsolete?

As others have posted, paid content is not even close to being dead; it’s very much alive in niche media. But in terms of the mass media, yes, the pay market has gotten pretty small, and Consumer Reports may end up being the only long-term holdout.

Frankly free content is allright for junk, but if you consumers want a real product, they’ll pay up. Why? Because the quality is there…or lack of quality if I say.

Free is not always the answer…how many people do you think will use Google docs instead of MS Office?