If you haven’t heard, The New York Times erected a paywall around its digital content beginning 2 p.m. ET on Monday. Based on our initial tests, it’s already fully functional.
After clicking through 20 articles on the site, further access was blocked by a pop-up message politely requesting I subscribe to read more. I was still able to read a seemingly unlimited number of articles if I clicked through from Facebook, Twitter or another online publication. I was also able to read another five by arriving via Google and, interestingly, five more if I searched through Bing, suggesting that I can simply switch search engines if I need to pull up more than five Times articles about a given subject in a 24-hour period down the road. (I’ve reached out to the Times to confirm that the paywall is supposed to work this way, and will update this post with any further inf ormation.)
This all makes a good deal of sense. The Times isn’t trying to get everyone to start paying for its digital content — in fact, the publication has repeatedly stressed that the paywall will only impact a small percentage of its readers, and it very much wants new and casual readers to continue to have access to its content. Specifically, it will impact those that have a habit of arriving at the nytimes.com to read several articles per day, and/or those who frequently access Times content through its mobile and tablet applications. It won’t impact lighter readers, and those who tend to arrive at the Times from search or social media. I fall in the latter category, and I suspect many of you do, too.
Paywall Details
For the first four weeks, the Times is offering a heavily discounted digital subscription rate of $0.99 for the first four weeks. After that period, readers who wish to c ontinue reading more than...
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