Comments on: Why Does the Wall Street Journal Hate the Web?

By: robert ivan

robert ivan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:59:42 +0000

at the time this article was written wsj.com was generating $78million per year in online subscriptions. 11 months later they are generating a little over $100million in online subscriptions.

all the free online newspapers would kill for this right now and i suspect they are working feverishly on how to charge for their content. just because ny times select failed doesn’t mean a paid model is a failure. it just means that particular model failed.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:03:17 +0000

I have a solution to the password sharing problem that would work in favor of both parties.

Question is, who would I bring the idea to without it getting lost in the shuffle?

By: I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog

I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:59:04 +0000

Wow, that’s two things that makes me want to punch a company in the eye (if that were possible) on the same page. One, telling me, a subscriber who’s already paid, to pay them again because they’re too incompetent to tell I’m a subscriber. Because of the big font-differentiated letters and the highlighting in red, the first thing I see is ‘You’re a cheat! Pay us more money!’ Ever had a checkout girl forget to take the security tag off your purchase, had the alarm go off as you leave, and get treated like a shoplifter by a 6-foot thicko in a security uniform? It’s annoying when a company treats you like a criminal, but it’s infuriating when you’ve paid them money.

The second bugbear is the treating of their readers like morons. “For your security…” how the hell does this make me more secure? It’s as bad as getting a full-page ad between websites and being told it’s a ‘welcome screen’. Tell the truth, we might even respect you for it.

Eyes may instinctively roll at the sight of a blogger attacking the Wall Street Journal, but they really are completely out of touch if they think that people nowadays only ever view a website from one computer, and won’t mind logging off and logging on again every time they visit. Convenience, convenience, convenience.

By: kmr2

kmr2 — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:44:01 +0000

@Joe,

Sorry about that – didn’t realize the period at the end of the sentence would get added to the hyperlink. Let’s try again:

http://online.w...130-700300.html

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:14:00 +0000

@kmr2 — That link’s dead …
PAGE UNAVAILABLE

The document you requested either no longer exists or is not currently available.

You may use the “Back” button in your browser to return to the previous page, click Home to return to the WSJ.com home page, or access the Site Map.

To report this problem, contact Customer Service at onlinejournal@wsj.com.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:12:50 +0000

Clearly WSJ missed the mark in that PR statement. It’s not about the fact he got locked out for multiple sessions, it’s the fact they still believe the walled-garden approach works.

I just know I NEVER link to WSJ, despite how relevant the content because I dont want my visitors going there, ever. Long live the AP, Feeds, RSS and Blogs!

Blogosphere > WSJ.

~Joe

By: CAR

CAR — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:15:23 +0000

Wall Street is retarded. They just want to seem like a high end business place. Funny being Wall Street, you’d think they would know, they can make more money from putting ads and being free.

By: kmr2

kmr2 — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:55:49 +0000

As one counterpoint to the provocative title of this post, folks might want to check out http://online.w...130-700300.html.

In short, they are partnering with Loomia on their Facebook app: SeenThis. Seems fairly progressive to me.

By: Jarrod

Jarrod — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:46:00 +0000

This is the same thing that is happening in the music industry and the real estate industry. When something shakes a business model to it’s core, the old school litigates, while the new school innovates.

WSJ is strictly old school.

By: Scott721

Scott721 — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 02:29:13 +0000

All you folks that “love” the openness of the NYT and can’t figure out why the WSJ keeps charging for their (vastly superior) content – better start making a contribution voluntarily because the NYT stock is so far down the toilet you’ll need a long rubber glove and plunger to get it out.

By: Cary

Cary — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:25:37 +0000

Sounds more like a “inadvertent bug” in their login mechanism. They’re attempting to be strict, but in all likelihood, they’ll have to loosen it up a bit if they notice a large number of incorrectly locked accounts.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:14:30 +0000

To continue on my thoughts (and agree with Doug), where’s the model that suggests that SEO work would greatly improve WSJ’s advertising.

Further SEO content in many cases is somewhat expired, meaning that the quality of the both the content and user viewing the advertising decreases.

I would imagine that WSJ prefers it’s the Match.com of online business journalism, not the Plenty of Fish.

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:23:10 +0000

We thought about implementing an IP address lock-down for our subscription venture capital database (shameless plug: http://www.VentureDeal.com), but after about 5 seconds decided against it for the very reasons cited in the article.

To make password-sharing more encumbering, the WSJ could simply require users to change their password periodically…We don’t, but it is one way to minimize access sharing.

By: WebSide Ventures

WebSide Ventures — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:16:56 +0000

Sounds like they don’t plan on moving to a free model any time soon…

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:15:45 +0000

Brigg -

Prove it.

Show me numbers which prove that the WSJ would make more money, right now, by monetizing all of its online jouralism exclusively with ads. It’s difficult for me to believe that your friend has drawn a finer bead on business models for online journalism than the executives at Dow Jones / News Corp. In the long run, I believe the Journal will continue to produce the best reporting of any American paper, precisely because its business model is financially sound. Have you seen capitalization figures for the NYT recently?

That said, the WSJ could do a better job of giving me access to my subscriptions on different platforms.

By: ivv

ivv — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:08:52 +0000

The avantegard Business 2.0, on the other hand, allowed universal access for all.

By: Scariest journalist for startups

Scariest journalist for startups — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:22:15 +0000

Many startups like us…. We are soo afraid of Maria Bartiromo!!!
We never do interview with threating woman and scary Q&A.

Michael Arrington is safe with us.

By: Ocean

Ocean — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:20:01 +0000

I’m trying to figure out what makes ‘Erick Schonfeld’ such an expert on the journalism business that he can criticize the WSJ and refer to them as “the old guard”.

What makes the ‘A-list bloggers’ businessmen? Or are they not businessmen at all?

Questions, questions.

By: Brig Graff

Brig Graff — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:08:07 +0000

you know, I like WSJ content a lot more than NYTimes content but I love how nytimes.com is fully open so I always go to nytimes.com and I never go to wsj.com. Long live Marshall Simmonds, the SEO expert at NYTimes who has helped make NYTimes so solid on the web. I wish WSJ would follow their lead. A friend of mine, Paul Breummer of Red Door Interactive, wrote an article that contrasted the SEO-ification of nytimes.com vs. wsj.com…and nytimes.com just crushed wsj.com. The thing that Marshall discovered for nytimes.com is that they would make SO much more ad revenue by opening up all that content to be crawled & indexed & visited than they ever would by forcing paid subscriptions to online content. WSJ would have similar success if someone would just show them the numbers (oh, and redesign their site to be super spider-friendly).

By: WSJ full of kiddies

WSJ full of kiddies — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:07:08 +0000

WSJ hired smartest people who can’t fix the web 1.0. :/

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:59:57 +0000

Are you kidding me? WSJ owns their content. They can choose to keep it behind a walled environment, make it available via RSS with advertising or whatever they want. They are paying their staff to write articles and if the demand for the content is high enough they can charge for it what the market will bear as there are alternatives.

The problem is in the product manager who didn’t figure out all the use cases and the product marketing in educating you user base about the forthcoming changes and getting feedback.

This is the equivalent of the WSJ physical edition going to 4pt font or something — not the equivalent of them raising or lowering prices.

By: Bob Ngu

Bob Ngu — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:53:05 +0000

That’s just silly of WSJ, it is going to increase their phone support costs to handle the complaints. In the grand scheme of things, it might not be cost-effective for them to impose this restriction.

By: kidd redd

kidd redd — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:51:12 +0000

I just started noticing this as well, and it’s really annoying, especially if you are trying to, say, read your WSJ on the iphone but your MBP is back at the office still on the site. I don’t mind paying for the content, but don’t be all gestapo about it.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:41:26 +0000

In the tradition of ‘Old’ media they should allow multiple users to access the site simultaneously, but only in DIFFERENT sections of the site. It would be like having to read the Sports page of the paper because your wife has the Front page… ;-P

By: WSJ is okay...

WSJ is okay... — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:39:42 +0000

What is difference between Techcrunch & WSJ?

Well, Duncan riley is very first techcrunch gay writer. WSJ is donald triumph or anti-gay party. This why they block it.

They giving execuse and strange cookie access. If you using not techcrunch. That shouldn’t be problem….