Rupert Murdoch Gets Shy: Tries To Hide Traffic To His Pre-Paywalled Sites

from the don't-want-any-comparisons... dept

Tue, May 4th 2010 9:43pm — Mike Masnick

It looks like even Rupert Murdoch and his crew at News Corp. aren't all that confident in how well his new paywalls for his newspapers in the UK are going to do. Apparently, News Corp. has convinced the media-owned organization, ABC, that tracks traffic to newspaper sites in the UK, to no longer publish the numbers for his sites. ABC is still tracking the numbers, but it won't publish them. Apparently, someone is a bit sensitive about people noticing how much traffic has shrunk. Maybe it's starting to sink in that there really is competition online, and most of it is remaining free.

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Filed Under: paywall, rupert murdoch, traffic
Companies: news corp.

18 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 4 May 2010 @ 11:39pm

... or maybe he doesn't want the competition to know how well he is doing.

Who knows, maybe thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of punters WANT to pay for their news even though they can get it for free.

As we say in the UK, what a plonker.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 12:06am

Re:
That's it! He doesn't want anyone else to compete by charging for their news as well!! If everyone knows how much he can make they'll all get in on the act and compete.
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RST101 (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 12:18am

So what your basically saying AC is you can compete with free. But I suppose your also one of them who say's the movie/music industry can't compete with free.

Which one is it> You either can or you can't.

I think it's more of a case of hide the stats because we look like plonkers.

Down with the evil Murdochs!
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barney rumble, 5 May 2010 @ 12:18am

murdoch is getting close to trouble if
as the youth of today progresses with 500000 friends on facebook WHO THE HELL needs any news websites.
Anything remotely relevant to the universe is world wide in seconds and this is why Murdoch's next move as we all see with failing morons that do not know how to adapt is to start finding some way of suing people...like bloggers ( pirates OH that was a good laugh)
I would counter sue for slander , defamation, libel, Pain and suffering. you can get all the free news you want via non paying sites and i can't remember when if ever i have visited any murdoch website.
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PaulT (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 12:44am

Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if
The need for news sites would still be there - you still need someone to help filter through the news, help make sense of more complicated situations and separate the fake news from the real stuff. A quality, non-partisan source that provides these services could be very valuable.

Of course, this is the exact opposite of the way Murdoch runs his organisations. The web will certainly not be a poorer place once his shrill, biased, partisan tabloid crap is removed from public view.
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DS, 5 May 2010 @ 3:45am

Re:
In an infinite universe, anything is possible....

...but not always probable.

What would they gain from hiding success? Wouldn't large numbers attract more customers (well, if that many people think it's a good idea, it must be), and allow them to be more attractive to advertisers?

Naaa... couldn't be... right?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 3:54am

Re: Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if
Except the shrill partisan tabloid crap is what a lot of people want. The web is full of it because informed quality news is boring. Also, it doesn't provide a simple answer to every problem by getting angry at one political party or the other.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 5:15am

Re: Re:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=plonker
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abc gum, 5 May 2010 @ 5:18am

Re: Re: Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if
The best part of the tabloid (while waiting in line at the grocery) was the obvious cut and paste done on the cover photo. This was hilarious. The stupid headlines were also good for a laugh.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 6:30am

i think that all that rupe is doing is avoiding having to deal with idiots who will equate internet traffic levels with the success or failure of the subscription model. the success of the model is a bottom line thing, not a measurement of how many 13 year olds are checking out a site.
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Hephaestus (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 7:15am

A little about Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdochs Assets and a little about Rupert Murdoch and wikipedias page on news corp

Since ABC isnt the only one that tracks traffic to newspaper sites in the UK. Lets use Alexa Internet Traffic Stats and Metrics on News Corporations Newspapers

Australasian region Newspapers:

Daily Telegraph
Fiji Times
Gold Coast Bulletin
Herald Sun
NT News
Post Courier
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday Mail
Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday Territorian
Sunday Times
The Advertiser
The Australian
The Courier Mail
The Mercury
The Sunday Mail
The Sunday Telegraph
Weekly Times

United Kingdom region Newspapers:

News International
News of the World
The Sun
The Sunday Times
The Times
Times Literary Supplement

United States region Newspapers:

New York Post

InterNational

online.wsj.com/public/us
WSJ
WSJ digital network

I thought I would do the whole list ... not bad for five minutes work.
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Hephaestus (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 7:21am

Re:
Take a Look at the Alexa Ranking for News Day starting in late October. There is a correlation between internet traffic levels and subscriptions. Not much of one, but its there.
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Ron, 5 May 2010 @ 7:25am

Re:
You obviously have NO clue what your talking about!
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Hephaestus (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 9:29am

Re: Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if
"you still need someone to help filter through the news,"

Thats where aggregators and RSS feeds come in. You are seeing more and more specialized RSS feeds. With them you can just get the news you want and ignore britney and her ilk.
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Hephaestus (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 10:47am

Re: A little about Rupert Murdoch
Sorry I didnt check all the links and some of them redirect
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slander (profile), 5 May 2010 @ 2:57pm

Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if
I can sue on my own behalf, thank you very much...
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Mehda, 5 May 2010 @ 8:16pm

Re
There's no point in hiding traffic, it's subscriptions that generate revenue for a pay-walled website. You can have a situation while the traffic holds up but subscriptions remain low because e.g. you can read 3 articles from on the Times for free per day. and how many people read more than 3 articles from the same online newspaper these days?
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Abbas Eskandari, 16 May 2012 @ 11:46am

please open for us,all of blocked sites
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