Newspapers forcing Net registration
March 19, 2005 by Mike Wendland
Have you noticed the growing trend by newspapers to force registration on Web users to access their content? What seems to be the pattern these days is that after collecting all sorts of personal info, they then sign you up for dozens of ad offers and junk newsletters, unless you take the time to opt out. In most cases, I’m betting most people just click out and go elsewhere. I sympathize with newspapers who are losing subscribers to the Net but I wonder, is registration the answer? Isn’t this going to send more people to the blogs?
It’s called
http://www.bugmenot.com/
Learn to love it.
I don’t mind registering for sites I use all the time (NY Times, Mlive.com), but it is annoying when you click on a link to read one story but can’t without registering. I’ll have to give bugmenot a try.
In my case, Mike, I’m usually reading a blog that refers me to the newspaper story. So, I think newspapers that require logins are missing the opportunity to grow their readership through the blogosphere.
I have to vouch for bugmenot. An excellent site! Use it all the time.
My newspaper is now registering, but it’s a good site and growing. I have to sign in everywhere else that’s worth anything, so I don’t mind it for this site.
I don’t get popups, spam, or anything else undesired. The information we’re giving is helping them tailor the site to our interests!
It’s not so much that I mind registering, it’s just that I hate to spend more time to register than I will to read the article for the one time I will visit that paper’s site. Like a couple of the commenters above, for sites I only visit once from a link, I also use bugmenot.com. It’s just a fact that I probably won’t frequent an out-of-town newspaper’s site, because by default the most valuable newspaper content is local and I won’t care about most of it. Why make me register?