If You're Going To Ask People To Pay For Your App, NYT, You Should Make Sure It Doesn't Suck

from the just-a-suggestion dept

We've been quite critical of the NYTime's "Emperor's New Paywall," but there's another aspect to the discussion that goes beyond just the "paywall" itself, but the fact that part of that "paywall" is really granting access to either a smartphone or iPad app. Of course, they're charging an awful lot for the privilege of having access to the app, and you'd think if they were doing that, the app had better be damn good. Unfortunately, that appears to not be the case. Lots of people are giving the apps pretty bad reviews. Yes, some of them are just complaining about the price, but even if you ignore those, the people who are actually paying seem to be complaining quite a bit as well. In particular, many are angry that it removed functionality from the old app, and people who had used the old app to archive favorite stories had them all deleted. Others are complaining that the app seems to crash all the time, and does not appear to be well implemented at all.

This raises another danger of "charging" for things that might otherwise be free. When you put up a price on things, you also increase expectations. If you fail to meet those expectations, you could face some serious backlash (not to mention customer service costs). It's really quite amazing that in those 14 months and with that $40 million, it appears that the NY Times didn't really spend all that much money on actually making their smartphone and tablet apps work well.

Filed Under: apps, business models, journalism, paywalls
Companies: ny times

NYTimes Threatens NYTClean Bookmarklet Maker With Bogus Trademark Claim

from the uh,-that's-not-how-trademark-works dept

We've already mentioned NYTClean, the four-line javascript bookmarklet that lets you remove the NY Times' paywall with a single click. Apparently, the NYTimes' lawyers, with their interesting interpretation of trademark law, have threatened the creator of those four lines of code, and bullied him into changing the name to NYNewspaperClean. The NYT claims that it's not complaining about the functionality, but just the name:

I am writing concerning your “NYTClean” bookmarklet, posted at http://euri.ca/2011/03/21/get-around-new-york-times-20-article-limit/.

As you obviously know, The New York Times Company has used its ‘The New York Times’ trademark since at least as early as 1851 and today offers numerous products and services under its famous ‘The New York Times’ trademark, including its online version of The New York Times at the URL NYTimes.com, and various blogs and electronic media products. NYTCo’s NYTimes.com website receives over 15,000,000 unique visitors each month. NYTCo owns numerous registrations for its ‘The New York Times’ trademark in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Canadian Trade-Marks Office and these trademarks are among the company’s most valuable assets.

We object to your use of our famous "NYT" trademark in connection with your application and your promotion thereof, which constitutes trademark dilution and trademark infringement under U.S. and Canadian trademark law.

Accordingly, we ask that you immediately cease use of the "NYT" trademark in connection with this application. This email is without prejudice to any action that may be necessary to protect the valuable rights of NYTCo in its intellectual property.

This is trademark abuse. There is no confusion here. No one using the NYTClean bookmarklet thinks that it's endorsed by the NY Times. No moron in a hurry is going to be confused into believing it's a product of the NY Times. The trademark that the company has on the NY Times does not give the company total control over NYT. It only allows them to stop situations where there is clear confusion or dilution, neither of which are likely here. This is just a form of trademark bullying.

Filed Under: nytclean, paywall, trademark
Companies: ny times

How Else Could The NY Times Have Spent $40 Million?

from the let's-come-up-with-some-ideas dept

While we've already been suitably stumped over the question of how the NY Times spent $40 million dollars to create the Emperor's New Paywall, perhaps we should take a more proactive view and discuss what else they could have done with that $40 million to put it to use more productively. That link has a few suggestions, from creating better products to investing in startups. I'm still wondering why it didn't use that money to simply create more value for users -- more features, more tools to keep them coming back, greater access to journalists and each other, more community features, etc. So how else do people think they could have spent that $40 million more productively?

Filed Under: business models, journalism, paywalls
Companies: ny times

Is The NYT Paywall Just A Ploy To Sell More Print Subscriptions?

from the or-are-they-just-crazy dept

There are so many strange and problematic aspects of the New York Times' ersatz paywall plan that sometimes the big and obvious one doesn't get discussed enough: it's really really expensive. A year of full access on all devices comes out to $455 (or $421 if you count their paltry four-week introductory discount). That's more than the Wall Street Journal - way more. In fact it's more than a lot of things, as this chart by Michael DeGusta illustrates nicely:

But it gets even crazier when you compare that price tag to a New York Times print subscription. A year of weekday home delivery only costs $285 the first year, and $322 after that (with some variation by location). That's right: over $100 cheaper than a digital subscription - and a print subscription includes full digital access. Perhaps one of the economists who writes for the New York Times can correct me on this, but that doesn't make any goddamn sense. If you're going to charge $455 a year for a website, you better not tell me I can get the same thing plus a few hundred pounds of free kindling for two-thirds that. If I pay you $150, will you also mow my lawn?

I can think of only two explanations for this. One is that I am severely misinformed about the nature of the internet, and websites are in fact delivered to my computer by truck while system administrators dump barrels of ink in the sewer. The other is that, in the long run, the paywall is just a giant ploy to get their print subscriber numbers up. Some believe that the print prices are purposely obfuscated, but I think this is a temporary situation. I predict two things will happen before the year is out: readers who hit the paywall will start being greeted with home delivery offers alongside the digital packages, and digital subscribers will begin to receive offers to "add on" a print subscription at no "extra" charge.

If I'm right about the New York Times' motives, I'll be pretty disappointed. Their strategy is so confusing that everyone is having a hard time figuring out exactly what they hope to accomplish, but at least it seemed to be an acknowledgement that the economics of news distribution have changed (even if they reacted in an entirely backwards fashion). Now it is beginning to seem like nothing more than an attempt to prop up the same legacy model that has been holding them back this entire time.

Filed Under: business models, paywall, print
Companies: ny times

Saying That The NY Times Paywall Is Dumb Does Not Mean That We Don't Want The NY Times To Make Money

from the this-is-real? dept

Someone passed along Simon Dumenco's AdAge report in which he purports to debunk the bloggers who are criticizing the NY Times' paywall. Frankly, it may be the dumbest argument I've seen in a long time, in that it makes absolutely no sense. First Dumenco mocks BoingBoing (where Cory Doctorow is not a fan of the NYT paywall) because it didn't have employees kidnapped in Libya like the NY Times did. And... somehow, this is proof that a paywall makes sense. I'm not kidding.

Dumenco's demented argument appears to be "the NY Times does real journalism, the people complaining do not, and thus mocking a paywall is bad." But that completely and totally ignores the very point that people are making about the paywall. We're not mocking the paywall because we don't like news organizations doing real journalism, or we think they don't deserve to make money. We're mocking the paywall because it won't help the NY Times actually make that much money. It's a bad idea not because it'll help the NY Times continue to do serious reporting, but because it won't actually help them do that. That's the point that many of us -- including Doctorow -- were making. But instead of responding to that, Dumenco made up a complete straw man that somehow people against the paywall are against the NY Times doing reporting at all.

Even worse, he compounds the ridiculousness of the argument by then mocking Doctorow's support of business models that include "free" as a part of the business model by noting that Doctorow sells physical books, even as he gives away digital copies of all of his books. It's as if Dumenco's brain can't comprehend rather simple concepts. When people talk about the use of free as a part of a business model, it doesn't mean that everything must be free. For example, I read Dumenco's ridiculously stupid article online for free. Does this mean that Dumenco also doesn't believe that the NY Times should make money? That seems to be the logical conclusion of his illogical argument.

We see this kind of brain-dead logic all too frequently in discussions of business models in the digital age. I tend to think of it as the mental divide-by-zero error, wherein otherwise intelligent people simply stop thinking, the second someone mentions "free" as a part of a business model. Suddenly, they think that this means "absolutely everything must be free and no one should make any money at all." And yet, no one argues that. They're arguing about what things should be free, and what it doesn't make sense to charge for if you actually want to make money. For example, charging for a paywall online is probably not a very good business strategy to make money. Saying that doesn't mean I don't want the NY Times to make money. It means that I think they could make more money by putting in place an alternative business model -- such as by getting people to pay for added scarce value, rather than abundant content.

Filed Under: business models, cory doctorow, free, paywalls, simon demenco
Companies: ny times

The Emperor's New Paywall

from the that's-not-a-paywall dept

We've already covered just how easy it is to get around the NY Times' $40 million paywall. NYT management is clearly lying when it claims that most people won't bypass the wall, when it's so incredibly easy to bypass... even by accident. With the DailyCaller listing out five more ways to bypass the paywall (not even counting things like the bookmarklet or turning off javascript) such as "removing '?gwh=numbers' from an article's URL," it's finally occurred to me:

This is the Emperor's New Paywall.

The NY Times isn't robed in a paywall at all. It's naked and simply wants people to believe it has a paywall, in the hope that some people will pay and that the masses won't call them on it. Except unlike the Emperor in the fairy tale, you have to believe that the NYT management must recognize this, and is simply playing stupid in its interactions talking about this. It really seems to think that by playing stupid and pretending it really has a paywall, which is truly just a voluntary donation program, it will make people more likely to pay. And I'm sure some people will pay, but I can't believe the numbers will be enough to move the needle. The thing that I still can't understand is how it could spend all this time and money preparing for this and not add a single bit of additional value in this scheme. You would think that during those 14 months someone might have come up with a plan to add more value that was worth paying for, but it seems that they didn't even consider that as a worthwhile option.

Filed Under: business models, paywall
Companies: ny times

Good Question: How The Hell Did The NYT Spend $40 Million On That Paywall?

from the please-help-explain dept

We've already expressed our bewilderment at the NY Times' new paywall and the fact that it cost the company $40 million and took 14 months to build. Some are now reasonably asking what about the paywall could have possibly cost $40 million?

The New York Times already had a credit card processing system for selling home delivery. It already had a database management system for keeping track of Web site registrants. What did they spend the $40-50 million on? A monster database server to keep track of which readers downloaded how many articles? They should already have been tracking some of that for ad targeting. In any case, a rack of database servers shouldn’t cost $40 million.

I'm guessing that some of it involved user testing. The NY Times keeps trying to claim that it was its own users who told them this was the paywall they "wanted." But, still, between a ton of research, a bunch of programmers, some equipment... I'm having trouble figuring out how $40 million could have been wasted on this. Any help?

Filed Under: expense, journalism, paywall
Companies: ny times

Should Have Known Better Than To Trust The NY Times: China 'Protest' Hangups Story Is Bunk

from the they-want-me-to-pay-for-this? dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about a report in the NY Times of people in China having their phone calls cut off mid-call when someone says the word "protest." In our comments, many people questioned whether or not this was true, and with good reason. It now turns out that the story appears to be complete bunk. A bunch of folks in China have been testing this and can find no evidence to support it. In fact, one of the reporters who worked on that article commented on that link to say that he, too, tested it and could not confirm it. Yet... the NY Times published it anyway.

Yes, we should have known better than to trust a NY Times trend piece that opens with a cute and perfect anecdote. I apologize.

In fact, we've called the NY Times out for this same thing in the past. They love to start stories with "perfect" anecdotes that do not appear to have much basis in reality. But they want us to sign up for their paywall to pay for this kind of "reporting"?

Filed Under: censorship, china, fact checking, journalism, protests
Companies: ny times

NY Times In Denial: Only Teens & The Unemployed Will Game The Paywall

from the emperor-has-no-clothes dept

It's really quite incredible how deeply in denial folks in the upper management at the NY Times appear to be about the paywall. In the last few days I've received some communications from some NYT staffers who seem to agree that the paywall itself is ridiculous, and is a backwards looking policy. As many have noted, the whole thing seems like a case of the Emperor's New Clothes anyway, since it's incredibly easy to avoid the paywall, either with some simple javascript or by just visiting from elsewhere. And yet, NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears to be in complete denial about all of this, claiming that only teenagers and the unemployed will bother to game the system.

"Can people go around the system?" Sulzberger, the Times’s publisher, asked at a roundtable discussion hosted by the Paley Center for Media this morning. "The answer is yes, just as if you run down Sixth Avenue right now and you pass a newsstand and you grab a newspaper and keep running, you can read the Times for free."

"Is it going to be done by the kind of people who value the quality of the New York Times reporting and opinion and analysis? No," he continued. "I don't think so. It'll be mostly high-school kids and people who are out of work."

This appears to be someone deeply in denial. First of all, even if it is just done by high schoolers, those high schoolers will grow up. And never subscribe. But, more importantly, he's just wrong. Yes, some people will pay, but many, many, many people who are both adults and employed, will simply avoid the paywall completely.

Filed Under: arthur sulberger jr., paywall
Companies: ny times

On NYT Paywall, Citigroup says 'Good Buy'; Techdirt says 'Hello!?!'

from the say-what-now? dept

We've been having some fun mocking the NY Times paywall, which makes no sense to us at all. While we're sure some people will subscribe, the overall math is hard to make work, especially considering anyone who wants to can easily get around the paywall. In fact, the way the NY Times set up the paywall, it actually takes away significant value from the NY Times itself. Instead, it drives that traffic to other sites that link in to NYT stories, because readers don't use up "free clicks" if they come in via other sites.

In the meantime, we've got plenty of stories of other paywalls out there that suggest that people aren't particularly eager to sign up for paywalls. Some will. Perhaps a fair number will. The NY Times has the kind of brand that will certainly lead a bunch of people to just subscribe, perhaps without realizing they really don't need to do so.

However, consider ourselves confused and scratching our heads to hear that an analyst at Citigroup, Leo Kulp, is making the rather shocking prediction that "Revenue generated by an annual digital subscription will likely dwarf the advertising revenues generated by even heavy users." Say what? The only way I can see this happening is if the NY Times has the world's worst online ad sales force, which I doubt. And, of course, we already have some data on a NY Times subscription plan, back from the last time they tried a paywall. It generated some money -- about $10 million per year. Not chump change, but hardly a huge number for a publication like the NY Times, which was why they did away with it. They knew that expanding ad revenue was a much better plan.

So can anyone explain the math by which the NY Times' digital subscription revenue will "dwarf" ad revenue? I've been plugging numbers into spreadsheets, and unless the online ad market totally collapses, I just can't see the math making any sense.

Filed Under: business models, economics, paywalls
Companies: citigroup, ny times