4 ms·

May be it's a good thing for the news/media industry. Why rely on flimsy ads. If your news contents are credible and important to users they'll subscribe to it

by dj_doh 11y ago

May be it's a good thing for the news/media industry. Why rely on flimsy ads. If your news contents are credible and important to users they'll subscribe to it a la Netflix or HBO Go.

threeseed 11y ago
It's going to be increase the polarisation of the media that's for sure. In order for subscription models to work you have to either (a) focus your content on a specific target e.g. Huffington Post or (b) be eminately respected like the NY Times. The real company to watch is News Corp. The Sun in the UK was just eclipsed by the Daily Mail largely as a result of The Sun having a paywall on their website. This meant more web traffic to Daily Mail which then brought in new customers and translated to more newspaper sales. Likewise in Australia the paywall sites e.g. The Australian have been struggling. Making the subscription model work is turning out to be a lot harder than it looks for many.
erickhill 11y ago
That's an extremely naive attitude, IMO. To this day, the vast majority of publishers who rely on traffic and ad revenues simply can't afford to create subscription walls and stay in business. In addition, Mobile Web revenues are a tiny shred of revenue compared to desktop experiences. It isn't a huge leap to expect this type of behavior in a future release for Safari in OS X, too.
- Retric 11y ago
  The vast majority of publishers are terrible and I have no issue with them disappearing.
- douche 11y ago
  Desktop Safari has such a minuscule market share that it doesn't really matter.
- eli 11y ago
  Go check the comment thread on any HN link to a paywalled article like WSJ. Users really don't like paywalls. > Mobile Web revenues are a tiny shred of revenue compared to desktop experiences That's already changing and will continue to change.
dashoffset 11y ago
I'd definitely pay for a news subscription a la Netflix where I could read curated contents from various news sources.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

by dj_doh 11y ago

May be it's a good thing for the news/media industry. Why rely on flimsy ads. If your news contents are credible and important to users they'll subscribe to it a la Netflix or HBO Go.

threeseed 11y ago

It's going to be increase the polarisation of the media that's for sure. In order for subscription models to work you have to either (a) focus your content on a specific target e.g. Huffington Post or (b) be eminately respected like the NY Times. The real company to watch is News Corp. The Sun in the UK was just eclipsed by the Daily Mail largely as a result of The Sun having a paywall on their website. This meant more web traffic to Daily Mail which then brought in new customers and translated to more newspaper sales. Likewise in Australia the paywall sites e.g. The Australian have been struggling. Making the subscription model work is turning out to be a lot harder than it looks for many.

erickhill 11y ago

That's an extremely naive attitude, IMO. To this day, the vast majority of publishers who rely on traffic and ad revenues simply can't afford to create subscription walls and stay in business. In addition, Mobile Web revenues are a tiny shred of revenue compared to desktop experiences. It isn't a huge leap to expect this type of behavior in a future release for Safari in OS X, too.

Retric 11y ago
The vast majority of publishers are terrible and I have no issue with them disappearing.
douche 11y ago
Desktop Safari has such a minuscule market share that it doesn't really matter.
eli 11y ago
Go check the comment thread on any HN link to a paywalled article like WSJ. Users really don't like paywalls. > Mobile Web revenues are a tiny shred of revenue compared to desktop experiences That's already changing and will continue to change.

dashoffset 11y ago

I'd definitely pay for a news subscription a la Netflix where I could read curated contents from various news sources.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]