They seem to have put more thought into this system than the comical failure that was 'Times Select', spun thusly in the article:
The Times had experimented with a pay model before: TimesSelect, which ran from 2005 to 2007, charged for access to popular opinion columnists like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd and for The Times’s archives. That program brought in 227,000 subscribers at $49.95 a year, generating about $10 million in revenue.
But after they commissioned a study to examine how TimesSelect was working, company executives became convinced that restricting access to the site was constricting its potential for more readers and more advertising.
I was immersed in the blogosphere at the time and their columnists, the drivers of the system, discovered that almost overnight they'd become online nonentities and rebelled.
It looks like they've taken some steps to address that this time around (clicks from social media sites don't count toward people's 'usage') but I think it still displays a lack of vision by adhering to an outdated business model.
I'm with Atrios here- they've got the resources and the traffic to do anything they want and take their company any direction they care to. But the absolute limit of their vision is recreating their old print model on the internet.
I suppose it could work, but what a wasted opportunity.
/edit
Here's an interesting look at their baked in social media loophole, particularly:
And it’s yet another sign of a changing of the guard on the web from Google to Facebook and Twitter. It will arguably be easier to find all the NYT content for free via Twitter search than it was via Google search. At the very least, it will be more obvious. And the social filters of Twitter and Facebook will have people sharing only the best articles that you’re likely going to want to read anyway.
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