As I’ve written elsewhere, there’s some confusion over at the Times marketing department about how the paywall works. The basic idea ought to be that if content is behind the Times paywall, people might pay for it. If it’s not, they won’t.
Before you agree to hand over your money, here are 11 bits of the new Times site you can access for free.
Read the full post ...
There have been several attempts to work out how many people are paying to access the Times website now its gone behind a paywall. My estimate is: 46,154 a day. This is based on the number of comments on stories compared to other news sites.
Read the full post ...
I was invited to a preview of the Times / Sunday Times paywall tonight, which revealed some interesting things they’re planning.
It also threw up a number of questions – which no doubt they’ll be mulling over before the new site goes live. The most difficult one for me is why users would want to pay for two different websites covering the same subjects?
Read the full post ...The Times and Sunday Times have made a video about its new paywall. Here it is.
Read the full post ...
I got an email yesterday about what the Times will be offering once the paywall is up. Here’s a screenshot of the main bit.
Read the full post ...I wrote yesterday that I was sympathetic towards NewsNow and its ongoing row with newspapers, especially the Times. I’ve now decided that I’m not.
NewsNow crawls the Times site in order to gather information for its paid service to businesses.
Read the full post ...
I am sympathetic towards NewsNow over the newspapers attempts to block it linking to them. The site has been blocked from showing Times Online stories. But I think it’s campaign is a little overblown:
Read the full post ...UK national newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but the rate is getting slower and slower, according to the latest figures for the 129 accounts I’m tracking. November to December growth was just 6.6%, down from 17% earlier in the year.
Read the full post ...Newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but at an ever slower rate, according to the latest figures for the 130 accounts I’m tracking. October to November growth was just 8.3%.
Read the full post ...June 2009 saw the Mail Online unexpectedly overtake both the Guardian and Telegraph in the ABCes, partly on the back of US traffic and Michael Jackson stories.
Fast forward to September and the story is the same as earlier in the year – Guardian first, Telegraph second and Mail third. So what’s changed? To find out, I’ve compared the ABCe figures for UK and foreign visitors in June and in September. The difference between the Guardian’s performance and that of the Telegraph and Mail is revealing.
Read the full post ...National UK newspapers had 1,665,202 followers of their Twitter accounts at the start of October – an increase of 193,266 on September 1st (when they had 1,471,936).
The rate of growth has slowed, however. This is a monthly increase of 13.1%, compared with 17% from August 1 to September 1, and also from July 1 to August 1.
Read the full post ...
Anyone turning to Google to look into the cervical cancer jab is unlikely to be reassured. Although these results are generated algorithmically, Google’s results are anti-jab. There is very little in the way of balance in the results, with a mixture of old and new scare stories, and only a couple of positive stories.
Read the full post ...I posted yesterday about the shameful reporting of the tragic death of a girl who died on the same day as getting the cervical cancer vaccine – and how, without any evidence of a link, the papers were giving the impression that the vaccine, which will save hundreds of lives a year, is unsafe.
So, how are the papers covering the news that, as the BBC news site puts it in its 3rd most important story “Cancer jab ‘unlikely’ death cause: A girl who died shortly after being given a cervical cancer vaccine had a ’serious underlying medical condition’, an NHS Trust says”?
Read the full post ...
The UK media have learned nothing from the debacle over the MMR vaccine – where they relentlessly covered stories doubting the safety of MMR, putting the lives of children at risk.
They are continuing their habit of undermining public-health initiatives with their latest scare story about the safety of the cervical cancer jab, after the tragic [...]
National UK newspaper accounts had 1,471,936 followers at the start of September, an increase of 213,892 or 17% on August 1 (when they had 1,258,044 followers).
You can see the September figures in the table.
Read the full post ...
I’m giving up comparing websites using Alexa.com’s data. Checking the accuracy of Alexa data using ABCe numbers led me to believe they were good enough to rely on. But the Times reckons the Alexa numbers in my latest post relating to referrals from the BBC were rubbish – and the Guardian agrees.
Read the full post ...Instead of lambasting the BBC for the “chilling” effect of its online activities, and blaming the problems of online news sites on the BBC “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market”, News Corp chief James Murdoch should thank the BBC for all the traffic it sends his way.
The BBC is responsible for about 870,000 visitors a month to Times Online and 1.1 million to thesun.co.uk (see methodology, below).
Read the full post ...The Guardian has more bookmarks on Delicious than any other UK newspaper according to Quarkbase. There are nearly 11,000 bookmarks for the Guardian, with the Times in 2nd (3,944) and the Independent 3rd (3,196).
Read the full post ...I recently argued that bundling was the most likely way of Rupert Murdoch succeeding in charging for his newspapers online. And now I’ve spotted that the Times / Sunday Times are already doing that with their Culture section (apologies if you already knew this).
Read the full post ...Can’t decide whether to watch a film? If you’re searching online for a current film review, the Telegraph is winning the SEO battle.
Read the full post ...