The information site most visited in the world, the New York Times, came on Monday in a new era. That of charges. A bet that it hopes the famous American newspaper, should not cause him to lose the nearly 30 million unique visitors per month used to receiving their daily dose of information without spending a penny. To achieve this, the paper has introduced a subscription system considered complicated and very porous by more than one user.
The purpose of the New York Times is not to make that pay the most "addicted" to his readers. "It is above all an investment in the future," wrote on the site on Monday, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the newspaper's editor.For now, the reader does not pay until the 21st article retrieved within a month. In addition, users can continue reading without counting it comes from an article on Twitter, Facebook or blog. He even entitled to five free visits per day from search engines. Besides those who subscribe to the paper version also free access to the site.
Proliferation of avoidance strategies
To be faced with "wall" of the fee must be a major consumer of the site. And the New York Times is not kind to those he calls "the most loyal readers."They will pay $ 15 per month for access to the site and the application on smartphone, $ 25 for the site and the iPad version and $ 35 for all. The Times does not ask for her hand as $ 13 per month for the gathering offers all its services.
Yet, despite the flexibility of the model for "casual readers," the transition to fee has not been smooth. Soon, workarounds Wall paying emerged.
The first to have found the technical gap in the wall is a Canadian computer - the subscription system was tested one week in Canada before its worldwide deployment. He has published last week, a small code to never have to pay.Another user has created a Twitter feed that publishes links to all articles of daily life, allowing them free access. Finally, two former Google employees have set up "New York Times for a nickel" [The New York Times for anything, Ed], a site that lets you view the newspaper without paying.
NYT vs. Murdoch
Why then have paid $ 40 million charge as a wall pierced? The New York Times has asked two former Twitter and Google to stop their initiatives, but stating that he would not complain in court."There will always be some clever to circumvent the system," concedes, a philosopher, a spokesman for the newspaper.
A laissez-faire seems surprising at first, but if we look at the fate of the other big wall project fee, that of the Murdoch empire is finally in line with the era of time. In June 2010, the media tycoon Robert Murdoch decided to erect a model paying much more binding on all its publications. For the British Times, one of its flagship, while paying the passage was rare: 21 million monthly visitors it passed in late 2010, to 2.5 million. A destiny that the New York Times that claims to be the reference on the Net does not surely know.
