There isn’t a big enough audience that will pay periodic subscription fees for written content unless it’s niche and/or really great. With this move, Condé Nas

There isn’t a big enough audience that will pay periodic subscription fees for written content unless it’s niche and/or really great. With this move, Condé Nast is about to find out which of its properties are commodity content that usually find few takers who’d pay to go behind paywalls. It may then be forced to return to the ad supported model without a paywall unless it creates an innovative and usable solution for micropayments to allow people to pay (others have tried and some are still trying, but I haven’t seen a large enough success story). I wonder what Apple is going to announce (rumored to be in a couple of months) on the lines of an “all you can read” magazine and related content offering based on its acquisition of Texture, and how Condé Nast’s properties will figure in this offering.