Posts Tagged ‘the new york times’
paywall FAIL, part two »
Friday, March 18th, 2011
Remember when the New York Times had a paywall? (It was 2007, why would you?) A lovely time, full of broken links and the ubiquitous sign-in screen. The Grey Lady was sort of a bitch, no?
Now that wall’s coming back. Just because it didn’t worked before doesn’t mean it won’t now, right? They’ve learned their lessons, I’m sure. (Spoiler: nope.)
Do read the full list of details, but essentially there are three subscription options based on your device. You can view twenty articles each month, or five from Google or other sources, before that mocking sign-in screen appears. (more…)
why randall stross is an idiot »
Monday, March 9th, 2009
In a tweet last night (I caught this morning), @ConvincingIndie shared and article that has me thinking… If Randall Stross can be published in the New York Times, anyone with an eight-grade education and a MySpace account is ready for a byline. With one short article, he erodes intricate privacy concerns to caveman-speak.
…”disclosure becomes the norm and privacy becomes a quaint anachronism.”
Is he kidding? As more and more middle-agers add their boring to Facebook’s vast yawn network, we need more privacy, not less. This proves Randall can easily blather about a topic he misunderstands. (Journalism!)
[FB] offers advertisers a target of 54.4 million members of all ages. But if an advertiser wants to narrow its target audience to those 25 or older, the number drops to 28.8 million. Narrow it to those 30 or older, and [FB] has 20.3 million to offer.
So, Randall, you’re saying a 5yr-old network, only open to non-college/-high school users since 2006, has more under-30s than over? Do the math, neuron-free, and you’ll realize 95% of users from before 2007 are still under your insignificant age choice. (Journalism!)
Considering FB claims it has 175mill users, you have to wonder why Randall didn’t do an arbitrary age comparison on the larger group of non-targets. (And maybe mention how FB defines this market?)
Asked how many members ever change a privacy setting, Mr. Kelly said 20 percent.
FB’s revenue (when they eventually start getting some) is based on active users and their connections. For that reason (and others), they make the settings hard to find. A tech-savvy, long-time FB using friend of mine just found friend lists. That 20 percent is miraculous.
Members can selectively restrict access to some items, such as photo albums and videos. But customizing permissions for this or that, via multiple clicks, is no one’s idea of a good time.
Seriously. This guy has a job?
Anyway… It’s not that people are too impatient to update their settings, they’re not aware they can. It’s understating to say the settings are tedious but to downplay them as useless is absurd. (Let’s see how that first inappropriate status/photo read/seen by your boss hits you and how motivated you are to create a “colleague” list.)
When the distinction blurs between one’s few close friends and the many who are not, it seems pointless to distinguish between private and public.
Psst… less than ten minutes devoted to creating a friend list with separate permissions would solve his “blur” problem. His understanding of the tool is overestimated, misguided and terribly short-sighted. (Journalism!)
FB’s a remarkably useful platform for networking, keeping up with family and sharing with friends. Take an hour today (I don’t advocate using FB during work because you already do) and make a list of friends, colleagues and family. Use the privacy settings to adjust who sees what and share freely from here on out.
Then email Randall (stross//at//nytimes//dot//com). Tell him how easy it was, why you find it useful and that I sent you. The NYT seems in need of some insight that I’m happy to provide. (At a reasonable price.)
Cross-posted at SD&IF.
the times goes crazy (yawn) »
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Friday, under their “First Look Blog” the folk over at The New York Times Online went nuts and introduced a new “article skimmer.” As far as I can tell, they took the layout and concept of AllTop and added a blurb with an image. (Original!)
There will probably be ads among the articles. How will that affect the clean feel of it or the usefulness? What about user-generated homepages based on predetermined areas of interest? (A homepage with the top articles from Sports, World and Arts, for example.)
Many already have RSS readers or dynamic bookmarks to access the content they want while avoiding the ads and nonsense that typically comes with. Now The New York Times can manage (read: inject ads into) their own “feed.” The idea is already nearing ubiquitous so it’s boring but I still like it.
With improvements, and with varying versions for different applications, this could be big step away from a print-oriented business model (Front page, See [page], top content). Considering newspapers have had to resort to putting ads on the front page and above the fold, it’s about time.
To their credit, The New York Times has consistently been ahead of the curve with online projects. They opened up their online archives awhile back when they disabled pay accounts and they’ve put their fingers into quite a few social media pots.
One can only hope that their being early-adopters will help. They’ll need to attract enough readers to compensate for their current, too-perishable audience that’s discontinuing subscriptions because they’re grandchildren have started emailing them photos.
Update from previous post: Some have said, in so many words, “who cares?” to the TOS change within Facebook. Understandable. My point was they’ve made another of many mistakes. Their failure to notify users, their post-wreckage band-aide post, their arrogant grab of content and their complete defiance of the data portability flag they’ve wrapped themselves in is what’s outrageous. Not them doing it in the first place.
From a company so melodramatically moronic, it should have been expected. Zuckerberg and Co. have essentially told us to chill out, that they won’t use our content how we wouldn’t want, and we should trust them. When someone asks me to trust them (especially after proving themselves untrustworthy), I don’t.