Ok so guess what, The Sun Chronicle has now opened its gates to social media. Users can comment (ooooh, snazzy!) on their articles now. What a privilege, I must say.
But you have to pay up a one time 99 cents fee first.
Huh?
Are times really that desperate? Surely, the dwindling print newspaper industry in USA can’t have dwindled that much already that they are going to ask users for 99 cents to acquire the rights of commenting. I am in two minds about the move. I mean look at the reasoning:
- The Sun knows that print is gonna die and digital is the future.
- The banner ads model is simply not profitable enough to sustain the media house.
- But I am assuming that the strategy would remain the same > Get as many users as possible to make use of my service (reading content) and construct a revenue stream around it.
So why prompt users and result in fall-outs by forcing them to type their name, address, phone number and a legitimate credit card number! I have had my share of A/B testing experience and I know how much difference can one extra box in the form make. We are talking about a whole 2 minute procedure here, coupled with the fact that paying money for my basic right of ‘Freedom of Speech’ just doesn’t go well. Most of the big blogs get around 30% of their traffic from social networks these days.
Why not make the commenting feature more easy using Facebook connect / Disqus to push out these comments as status updates and thus bring in more visitors creating a neat viral effect. You don’t have to pay money for a Payment Gateway that way, nor disrespect your valuable users.
An interesting and only comment on the article for now:
The paywall you are requiring is honorable and perhaps even inevitable but it is too early for this in the evolution of the internet, and it will fail and cost you enormously.
A time may come many, many years out when we’ll all pay fees and microfees for interactivity on the network. But that time is not soon, and it’s most certainly not now.
Respectfully,
Gregory A. Roach
Respeck for Mr. Gregory!
