Salon.com Editor Looks Back At Paywalls

Techdirt pointed out an interesting retrospective by Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of Salon.com, about their experiments with paywalls and how repercussions can last a lot longer than some might expect. "More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is 'closed' to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out."

salon.com?

[bl8n8r]

Is that a hairstylist blog or something?

Sshhh!

[dswensen]

Keep it to yourself, will you? If Rupert Murdoch gets wind of this, he might change his mind about cordoning Fox News off from the rest of the Internet!

Actually, probably not.

Good frikkin lord...

[clone53421]

If I have to read another “funny” comment saying “what! salon.com dropped their paywall?”, I think I’m going to scream.

Re:Did Salon drop their paywall?

[Anonymous Coward]

You!
I wanna take you to a pay wall,
I wanna take you to a pay wall,
I wanna take you to a pay wall, pay wall, pay wall.

I've got something to put in you,
I've got something to put in you,
I've got something to put in you,
At the pay wall, pay wall, pay wall.
Wow!

Try me

[fulldecent]

let the paywalls go up.

i'll be the one to write a firefox extension that double underlines all paywall sites. And we all know by now... you don't dare even mouseover double underlined text.

Re:salon.com?

[Mister Whirly]

I find banging girls in their early 20s helps.
Well, actually it doesn't help me understand their perspective any better, but it sure is fun!!

What?

[mutube]

There was an article? News to me. I haven't looked at an article for at least a couple of years.

Re:Did Salon drop their paywall?

[jc42]

Salon is streaming lesbians

Wait, what?! I'll check as soon as I get off work...

Nah; don't bother; they're not naked. They're covered with this stuff that's sorta like a RL version of a paywall; they call it "clothes" or something like that.

Re:salon.com?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

This is even worse than a crotchety old person - it's a crotchety young person who thinks he's a crotchety old person because he's been online for a decade!