links for 2010-01-21

"Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge."

"We are doing so because we believe that a second revenue stream will be an important part of our future. While digital advertising will continue to be the major contributor to our success on the Web, we expect that online subscription revenue will improve our ability to grow an important part of this business."

"The New York Times plans to introduce a metered billing system on its Website sometime next year. The newspaper will begin to charge frequent visitors to its Website along the lines of what the Financial Times does on FT.com, which starts charging people who visit the site more than 10 times a month. But the new model is unlikely to move the needle on the New York Times’ digital revenues.

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"If a visitor to nytimes.com normally reads N articles per month, then the key number in their mind will be N-n. If reading that number of articles is worth more to them than F, they’ll pay the fee. If on the other hand N-n is small, or perceived value-per-article is small, then they won’t pay. Specifically, if the average value to the reader of any given article is v, then they’ll pay the fee when v(N-n)>F."

"Relying on advertising alone to finance that has not worked, as The New York Times has acknowledged. If your business model is that scary, you should try another.

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"The irony of the report that The New York Times is going to start metering readers and charging those who come back more often is this: They would would end up charging – and, they should fear, sending away – the readers who are worth the most while serving free those who are worth least."

"Consumers will spend $6.2 billion this year on mobile apps, downloading 4.5 billion times from app stores. Yet eight out of 10 app downloads won't be sold at all, but rather be free to end users. Advertising and marketing will close the revenue gap."

"Caroline Little, chief executive of Guardian America, told Press Gazette the company did not have any specific plans but was exploring possibilities for New York-based PaidContent.

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"Guardian News & Media’s digital director had already called charging for online newspapers 'a stupid idea' back in August. Now editor Alan Rusbridger has chimed in with scepticism, too… 'It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things,' he told an audience at Coventry University’s journalism department"

"One of the biggest early decisions a hyperlocal site entrepreneur makes is what Content Management System [CMS] they will use. One can think about this similar to picking a spouse. You are going to live with the decision day and night for a long, long time. "

"For the past 15 months, we've been working hard to improve Linkscape, our index of the WWW. Today, we're releasing an entirely new platform for Linkscape's index with more accessible data than ever before. And, for the next 48 hours, full functionality is available entirely for free"

"Good news for the big search companies with earnings season just ahead. Search engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier has upped its estimates for search ad spending this year. The company now expects spending to increase between 15 and 20 percent, up from its earlier estimates of 10 to 15 percent growth, in part due to the economic recovery. By contrast, Efficient Frontier says search ad spending increased six percent in 2009."

"Okay, that may be getting ahead of ourselves a little… Guardian.co.uk says it’s sold 68,979 copies of its premium iPhone app since launching in December. At £2.39 a pop in the UK (and $3.99 in U.S.), that’s £164.859 in income over the month, or, at that rate, £1.97 million (about $3.2 million) a year."

"Find hyperlocal sites closest to…"

"Single-function, black-and-white e-readers like Kindle may be building a business right now but it’s likely to remain niche and short-term"

"Aol’s answer to Wikipedia is Owl, a new site described as 'a living, breathing library where useful knowledge, opinions and images are posted from experts the world over.' Owl seems more of a testbed for Seed than anything else. Seed, of course, is Aol’s new low-cost content management system for soliciting articles and photographs for its network of existing Websites."

"HarperCollins Publishers is negotiating with Apple Inc. to make electronic books available for the introduction of a new tablet device from Apple, according to people familiar with the situation, posing a challenge to Amazon.com Inc.

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"The current chaos, Contreras told me, tilts the balance of power in rate negotiations to advertisers, who reasonably balk at paying any sort of premium rate when measures of whom they are reaching are unreliable and sometimes self-contradictory."

"For me hyperlocal is now best defined by outfits like the Lichfield blog, represented at the session by Philip John. It’s content built on social capital. People are involved because it means something to them other than just a job or brand. Money is second to social status or altruistic motivation.In contrast we could say that (in the context of the future of journalism) community is a strategy employed by media organisations and the journalists within them to engage with audience. "

“Shall we go back to letting the printers carry swords so that we can succeed by killing off the competition”

"But even if you aren't reading I have to carry on writing until the space is full. It's an uncontroversial model, an inevitable consequence of newspaper layout rules. But in a digital world, and one where the cost of journalism is not falling as quickly as the revenues that support it, the opportunity arises to rethink what is "enough" in terms of good reporting, or commentary."

"Over 100 million requests were recorded by the BBC iPlayer in December, approaching record levels of usage towards the end of 2009, according to new figures."

"Marketing budgets at UK companies were cut for the ninth quarter running at the end of 2009, but the rate of decline was the slowest for two years as marketers switched their budgets to the web, according to a new report."