We’ve all been to our favorite online newspaper sites and been startled one day when it asks us to provide registration information or demographic information. We’ve all probably felt, at least a little bit, that it hurts their readership. I know that I do get annoyed sometimes when I’m up to like fifteen registrations and some have usernames, some have passwords, and so on and so forth. (Okay, so it’s probably more like thirty now)
All this time, I think I felt it shied a lot of people away. I know a lot of sites “share” logins with their users - some posters on MetaFilter do, James Joyner does on Outside the Beltway, and I have as well on some web projects I’ve worked on. I really never thought that it would get that popular that it would actually work. At least not yet.
But according to this Joanna Glasner article at Wired, not only does it work - but it can even exceed what a publication puts together as far as circulation goes for its print counterpart. Wow. The article details how newsOK.com, The Oklahoman’s online site, decided to do so a few years ago with great results. It also speaks briefly about other examples like a short version that just asks for zip code, age, and gender - which I’ve seen much more commonly, especially when following “deep links” into a newspaper site.
So if you’re surprised that your local daily’s site has gone the way of registration, don’t be. It’s obviously well beyond just some trend, and will probably become the norm before too soon. Now if only the larger publishers with multiple sites could “unite” the logins, we’d be set.
1 response so far ↓
1 gmoore // May 17, 2004 at 10:52 am
Registration requirements seriously erode the usefulness of the internet as a research tool. I don’t want to read my local paper on line; I wamt to know what is being written on a subject in various parts of the country or the world. The proliferation of registrations means that I just won’t consult as many sources. I don’t see what the newspaper gains from that.