New York Times: A Lesson in How To Piss Off Readers

Today I was surfing the net and I came across a link on a blog for what seemed like a great article about Rick Rubin’s take on the music industry. I love music, and I have the utmost respect for what Rick Ruben has to say, I think he is a pure visionary. Needless to say, I clicked on the link and was met with this Internet monstrosity.

There is no easier way to piss off your readers than to force them to register to see your content. I know that it is free, but I do not want to go through the hassle of registering and logging in whenever I randomly stumble upon a link to an article on the New York Times. Let’s be serious.

I thought that most respectable sites threw out this practice years ago when they found that it only pissed people off and led to a decline in online readership. I know that they are just aching to have my personal information because it can be very useful for marketing purposes. But if I never enter their site because I don’t want to deal with registering (even if it is free) doesn’t that effectively ruin their business.

If I never enter the site then I will never view their ads, and the last time I checked ad-impressions are the life-blood of any media site. So I am hoping that they will realize that this is a huge mistake and stop hassling me for my personal information whenever I want to read one of their articles and provide them with precious ad-impressions.

I am not opposed to giving information to marketers. It’s not like the media is some evil empire trying to take all of my personal information and “1984” me…or are they? I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of registering all the time. I have so many passwords and logins I have to remember, and it’s not like I am such a regular user of the NY Times’ website anyway. Most of the time I just follow links there from Digg, Reddit, or other news portals.

However, from a business perspective, The NY Times needs to recognize that I have so many choices in media. If I run across a barrier to entry on a website, chances are I will just click the back button on my browser and find the next interesting link to follow. There are plenty of websites that are dying for my traffic…don’t make it difficult for me to visit your webpage.

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