Thursday, May 7, 2009

Murdoch to charge for News websites.

Billionaire Tyrant (his own words) Rupert Murdoch plans to charge people to visit his News Corp websites, starting in 12 months or so, to fix (as he calls it) a "malfunctioning business model.".

What do we think of this? Would you pay? One of the sites I visit most often is the excellent website of The Guardian. I could see myself parting with a small monthly fee for access, but I think its a backwards step. Murdoch's inspiration, apparently, is the booming trade of the subscription Wall Street Journal. But they cater for a very specific market, would the Sun reader pay to read it online?

I certainly wouldn't pay for anything Murdoch owns....

Link (from The Guardian, freely accessible)

2 comments:

Old Heckler said...

I would couple this news with the increasing trend of browsing internet through mobile phones. Would you take you credit card out of your wallet and pay for subscription of the Sun? Not really. Would you send a text message for 1 euro to browse The sun on your mobile (and get page 3 wallpaper as bonus)? It's more likely to happen.

Flavien Plouzennec said...

I agree with you two. I think the "readers" could only accept to pay for very specific contents, like a personalised newsletter for instance. Of course, it asks the question of the quality of the information you could get for free. Best information for rich people only ?