leweb
It must be tough to sit on a stage and see that only 1% of the audience has bothered to check out the latest version of your product. But that’s exactly the situation that Mike Jones [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jones_(Internet_entrepreneur)], CEO of MySpace [http:
iPad
[https://i0.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2010/12/DD8813C0-9AF6-455E-8EE8-EDFFD42557511.jpg] Time for a little Times update, as it were. The last time we spoke about it [http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2010/11/on_those_times_paywall_numbers.html] , I was considering dumping either my Times online
iPad
I am surprised by the amount of positive reaction that’s going around to the news that The Times has around 105,000 paying online customers of various stripes. (Full break-down of the numbers.) Partially I’m surprised, because nobody seems to be comparing acquisition cost to revenue, as well
business models
[](https://i2.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2010/10/guyclapperton.jpg) [Guy Clapperton](http://homepage.mac.com/guyclapperton/Personalpage), author of [This is Social Media: Tweet, Blog, Link and Post
news international
I confess: for all my “meh” about paywalls, I currently have paid access to The Times’ new websites. There are a couple of bloggers I actively miss, and think *might *be worth the money. Yesterday, I spotted this on Ruth Gledhill’s blog [http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/
Blogs
Some links about our friends in the nationals that have been hanging around in my Chrome tabs for too long now: * The Independent has switched its blogs from Livejournal to WordPress [http://publisherblog.automattic.com/2010/06/08/the-independent-switches-to-wordpress/] . Makes sense. LJ always seemed like an odd fit. * The Guardian
monetisation
The grand experiment is about to begin: [](https://i2.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2010/06/1C32A675-5FEA-428C-9C08-A224A5136E7Eiphone_photo.jpg) Now we find out if pay walls can work…Location:[The Quadrant,
apps
[https://i0.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2010/06/IMG_0005.png] **The Good**: The navigation is surprisingly fluid and intuitive. You can either read the the whole issue as you might the paper edition, swiping through each section in turn. Or, you can pick and choose the
community
And so it begins. After a launch event last night (which was invited to but was unable to attend, alas), *[The Times](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/)* and *[The Sunday Times](http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/)* have begun the four week transition to their new online model.
monetisation
So, The Times and Sunday Times will be behind a paywall from June [http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-times-new-pay-site-1-a-day-2-a-week-starting-june/] . The theoretical arguments between the “link economy and conversation brings value” and the “content is valuable and must be paid for” camps have been iterated and reiterated to death in recent
content
In the end, a war on Google is a much more appealing spin on the newspapers’ current position than “we haven’t figured out how to make money online in a decade of trying”. They’ll blame Google, they’ll blame the shadowy cabal of infomation-must-be-free proponents [http://www.buzzmachine.
business models
And so, the Murdoch plan for content charging [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-newscorp21-2009aug21,0,5961516.story] begins to become clear: > As newspapers across the country struggle with declining readership and > advertising revenue, News Corp. executives have been meeting in recent > weeks with publishers about forming a
