The New York Times Used Twitter to Announce Online Subscription: Followers Lash Back
On Thursday, The New York Times told their 3 million-plus followers on Twitter that they were introducing a plan to implement an online subscription to their website beginning March 28th. Announcing this change on Twitter was a brilliant move by The Times because they can reach out to millions of The New York Times followers on the popular social network with the click of a button.
The site will allow you to click on 20 free articles. Once you click on the twenty-first, a page will load asking you to subscribe to their online services. Three different options will be available to readers. The first option will cost $15 every four weeks or $195 for a year subscription. This option will give you access to the news website and a mobile phone app. The second plan will cost $20 per month or $260 per year. This plan will give the subscriber access to the news site and access to an iPad app. The last plan offered will cost the reader $35 or $455 a year for a full access unlimited plan.
Customers who subscribe to the home delivery service will have free and unlimited access to all Times digital platforms. This excludes downloads to e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Furthermore, customers who subscribe to The Time’s global edition, The International Herald Tribune will also have free digital access.
Most of the Times Twitter followers were not in favor of this change. Tweets fired back at the Times with “Good luck selling news you can get for free.” And “$15.00 is crazy. What a rip off.”
Overall if you weigh out the cost it is not so bad. Six days a week from Monday through Saturday costs $1.50 per day, and $4 for the Sunday edition. That’s $13 per week, $52 per month or $624 annually. That is much more expensive than any of the three plans offered.
Certainly there is a lot of free content available to us now. We live in a world where we are updated every minute. With all the mass media that is available to us today, how could anyone pay for an online subscription? The truth of the matter is that The New York Times will get subscribers and in my opinion this will slowly grow into something big for them because of one important word we all need in our busy lives, “convenience”.
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