Is this the dawn of anti social media? The Times new website goes live
Is this the dawn of the closed web and anti-social media? Or is the move by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times to erect its paywall a journalistic and business dead-end. I think increasingly it is the latter.
If the buzz word, if the zeitgeist, of this period in digital history is about being social, open and sharing then The Times and its paywall is about something quite opposite. It is about being anti-social. It is fighting against many of the new developments that are coming digital — save for the unknown such as the impact devices such as Apple’s iPad and other tablet computers could have on the market.
Some of the writers on The Times are heavily linked to and tweeted. They are shared by many. That is going to fall away dramatically come next month when The Times begins charging £1 a day of £2 a week for its two new websites Thetimes.co.uk and Thesundaytimes.co.uk, which are live today and free to access as part of a free trial period for registered customers.
One of the best examples of how some Times writers are shared to and linked to was highlighted at the weekend in a Lady Gaga storm when Times columnist Caitlin Moran on Saturday (@caitlinmoran) tweeted this about her interview with Lady Gaga:
First hats of to @caitlinmoran for a beautifully cheeky tweet, but one that was also very true. It was a very good piece. Not only a good piece, but one that showed the power of the social web as it went on, according to bit.ly, to score around 60,000 click throughs.
That just won’t happen after next month. I’ve said before that £2 is pretty reasonable price to pay if you really want to read The Times online, but why bother when you can read The Guardian and the BBC for free along with all their writers that bloggers and social media users can freely link to. Not to mention so many other websites. Not to mention the bulk of the web.
Everyone understands why Murdoch is doing it and the importance of placing a value on great websites and fine writing, but the whole exercise has an air of King Canute about it trying not to simply hold back the ocean, but to hold back the very spirit of the times. Maybe that should read spirit of The Times.
All Comments
Well intersting…i think there may very well be a drastic fall in the readership, but given the fee that is being charged it may also sustain..we would have to wait and see..
Have had a good look at the new Times website today and I’m afraid to say that if they intend to add value (or should I say ‘Charge’) then they need to try a lot harder. They’ve slipped back to using the ‘Times’ font, which makes sense, but is really ugly onscreen. The content – promoted as being new, essential, fresh – is just, well, average.
I’m happy to be proved wrong over time… but I’ll never know when it’s behind the paywall.
I’ve had a look to and really — try harder. The Times will struggle to score those piles of two pounds it is after. I had been a bit of Times reader. But I’m off back to the Guardian.
Steve Jones – the Times font is used very sparingly, and if it was to be more like the newspaper, I can understand it. I find the whole site really well designed (although I am a designer) and the use of the grid is very nice. I was expecting to see gradients, reflections et al (what is fashionable at the moment) but am relieved it is so clean and uncluttered. As you can tell, I really rate it…
@James, I agree it looks very nice, it reminds me straight away of the elegance of the New York Times, TimesOnline with that horrible green was never a work of design art. But I guess the point is no one is paying for good design.
This is not about being social, getting the most hits, sharing… This is about economic survival, the viability of the free press to continue. You have to pay people to do the reporting, to take the photos, to edit. And you don’t do that by “sharing” for free.
It isn’t sharing for free it is sharing to drive readers and sell advertising.
Pay to use that trashy webiste?!!
It’s worse that the free Timesonline already in use.
Am glad it’s currently only my online third-choice read for when I’ve time to play with. Would have thought a left-wing paper like the Times would have wanted to please its socialist, Labour supporting empathisers from the poor areas of the UK, not fleece them into spending money on overpriced journalistic trash!!
new times website looks like it was designed in 95 , hard to navigate , ugly layout , and a fight between columns and rows…very backward step,nasy font use ,poor use of white space ,, need i go on, another website removed from favourite list
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