4 ms·
Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following? "Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation:
by raldi 10y ago
Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following?
"Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"
- perlpimp 10y agoI am just wondering what would be equivalent to scanning some articles not reading them, conflating two destroys potential value to offer this proposition. I don't often read articles but I want to see if its worth reading. So it is a bit of a hardsell on part of wsj, but they do cater to more of the affluent public so my guess they stand to gain more from playing hardball with people who do have more disposable income than rest of the internet public.
- idclip 10y agoDo you realise the kind of tracking that entails?
- raldi 10y agoMost paywall newspapers already keep track of how many articles you've read this month, and count it down for you; this would just add a timer, too. Which their analytics code is surely already reporting.
- pzh 10y agoThe Guardian is doing something similar but without tracking the hours spent. They just say "Hey, we see you spend a lot of time around here. Why don't you help us out a bit so we can stay afloat?"
- colanderman 10y agoThe Guardian's tactic actually got me to pay for news for the first time in my life. For some reason I'm really turned off to the idea of buying a ~$100 subscription to a single paper, but I'll gladly toss $25 here or there in response to good journalism.
- i_cant_speel 10y agoWikipedia did the same thing for me. They request donations and I used it so often that I felt like I had to.
- disgruntledphd2 10y agoI value the guardian's work, but I give a lot more money to the FT (despite not particularly agreeing with their politics). Their world coverage is amazing, they actually cover european/middle eastern/asian politics with local reporters and I have never felt so well informed. They are also a reliable source of Tory puff-pieces, but that doesn't interest me as much.
- raldi 10y agoI feel like that's missing the sine qua non of the idea. You gotta remind people that, like, "You're read the equivalent of five novels here this year!"
- arjie 10y agoI fully predict that the first one that does that will be decried on HN as the NSA. The hordes of privacy cargo cultists will descend upon it like a pack of angry wolves. Before anyone claims that I'm being derogatory and dismissive of privacy claims, I'm claiming there's a loud minority of people that create a PR problem for companies by complaining about insignificant things.
- aw3c2 10y ago"Hey, we kept track of all the things you read here. This month you spent 13 hours looking at clickbait-boobies, 2 on politics and 27 on coverage of divorce cases. Wouldn't it suck if someone else used your machine right now or if we gave this information to tens of third-parties (we already did)?" I would support that. Might make people more aware of how pervasive tracking is.
- raldi 10y agoIt's like I started a conversation about haircuts and you're bringing up dismemberment.
- glenneroo 10y agoI often open 10-30 tabs with stories I want to read later.. and I leave those tabs sometimes open for a few hours or up to a few days until I have time/interest to read them. How would a paywall deal with that? Or perhaps I am the exception with this type of reading.