Wired Has One on the rise of registration only news sites. The article says companies swear the information they cull is accurate, and use it primarily to target ads. Slashdot has a discussion as well.
“By putting their advertisers’ interests above their readers’, news sites risk alienating their core customers. Without us, there wouldn’t be any advertisers to appease. There’s no law that says we have to tell them the truth about ourselves, and news is news: I can get it from any number of sources on the Net.”
Accuracy
companies swear the information they cull is accurate
I remember reading an interview of an editor or high up person at the New York Times and they commented on how, according to their registration data, many of their readers were 90 year old women that made over 1,000,000 a year.
What Me, Register?
I think this is quite ironic.Many special librarians are not allowed to give out any information about the attorneys, consultants or accountants that they work with. Many routinely make up fake users to register at sites. I know that a local paper was shocked to hear a) about the policy; and b) that people would register false information.
When faced with this kind of choice, what master do you serve: the one that pays you or the one that wants to sell to you?
JL
Re:What Me, Register?
Yes….. I would like to know from NYT, LAT, etc. “what’s in it for me to register, AND BE HONEST, besides getting to read some stories I could find somewhere else if I look.”
I mean — it’s not like they are getting PAID.
Neither am I.
Maybe I could just…. live without the Grey Lady.
Re:Accuracy
I myself am the worlds oldest Tanzanian woman.
Re:Accuracy – a modest proposal (literally).
I’m the last survivor of an obsolete nation. Will you marry me?
Re:What Me, Register?
I’ve brought a related issue, accuracy of self-reported information, up repeatedly in my job and it really shocks me how smart executives can’t believe users would enter incorrect information, whatever the motive.
An example: we had to spend thousands of dollars to change one screen on a helpdesk application so a field was ‘required’. The reason was users kept leaving it blank. I tried to explain that this was a waste of time and money – the users were leaving it blank because they didn’t know what to put there, made it faster to enter the info, no one yelled at them if they left it blank, etc. Making the field required wasn’t going to solve the problem. As predicted, once it was required, the users still didn’t enter correct information they just entered garbage. A popular entry for that field was ‘asdf’ btw.
I’m sure the newspapers had the same thought process. …
– People are using our site for free, but we don’t have any marketing data about them?
– I know! Lets spend thousands of dollars to develop a self-registration application so we know exactly who is reading our news online!