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Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Rumor: NYT to Kill Paid Content Model?

The New York Times has several sections of its website which are paid content, titled TimesSelect. (Partially some of us weren’t even sure if it’s Google-cloaking or simply “fading out” content.) Now the New York Post claims that Times executives decided to stop charging users for access to any of its content. “The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service,” the New York Post reports, citing an unnamed “source briefed on the matter”. Reuters picked up on the story as well, but other sources emphasize that the NYT is not confirming this rumor, and an NYT spokesperson even mentioned that TimesSelect has steadily grown since its inception in 2005.

At this time, a Google search for [site:select.nytimes.com] returns around 771,000 results. Somehow, most paid news content models on the web today end up being annoying, because they’re walking the fine line between trying to be part of the conversation and shutting people out of the conversation. This causes such unfortunate peekaboo constructs as links that stop working a week after you blog them, or links that only work when a certain whitelisted referrer (e.g. Google News) is found.

[Via Reddit.]

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