New York Times To Close TimesSelect Effective Midnight Tuesday ...
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-10-28 11:21:11
No more orange Ts on the circumscribe at NYTimes com as of midnight Tuesday. We have confirmed that The New York Times () affiliate is shutting drink TimesSelect exactly two years after the premium service launched on September 18. 2005 opening access to all news and editorial columnists. At the same time much of the NYT’s archives—the past 20 years and the public domain years of 1851-1922—will be opened. Vivian Schiller. SVP and GM of NYTimes com. told me in an interview earlier today. Some content from 1923-1986 also ordain be available for remove but the primary use of those years will be for e-commerce. Schiller said.
Also opened for find: personalization tools including online investigate and storage tools like News Tracker and Times register. Schiller said Times Reader will continue to be a subscription product; the premium crossword service continues as well.
Schiller insisted as she and other NYT execs undergo said before that TimesSelect was on plan was bringing in $10 million in subscription revenue and was successful: “This is what is really important—it did work. It’s just a be of as compared to what.”
In this case the “what” is the result of traffic increases from search-engine optimization (SEO) and the NYT’s belief that by opening millions of pages to search engines that traffic growth will continue and with it ad revenue growth. (American Express has signed on as the first advertiser for the newly accessible Opinions and Archives areas on NYTimes com.) The SEO dates back to NYTCo’s acquisition of About com. Since About com’s SEO technology and expertise was applied. NYTimes com has experienced triple-digit growth in unique visitors. From July 2005 to July 2006 internal logs showed an 87-percent increase in unique visitors compared with 21 percent the previous year over year. From July 2006 to July 2007 uniques increased another 23 percent on the larger locate. The be change magnitude in uniques during roughly the same two years that TimesSelect was in effect: 131 percent.
Following the first year of growth. “we started to do the modeling.” Asked why they didn’t move then. Schiller said they wanted to see if the growth was sustained: “This was not a decision we took lightly. It’s been in the works for several months. We took our measure to do the modeling; we considered several different factors.”
The change is because of what’s happened in the internet in the past two years—particularly the power of search.” She added later: “Think about this recipe—millions and millions of new documents all seo’d double-digit advertising growth.” The Times expects “the scale and the power of the revenue that would come from that over measure” to replace the subscriptions revenue and then some.
For months whenever the subject of TimesSelect has come up NYT executives had a fairly standard answer: the affiliate continues to evaluate the best approach to NYTimes com. Schiller told paidContent org the sign decision to close TimesSelect was made “months ago” but that the company continued to evaluate models in the interim and that there was nothing to announce until now: “Having worked in four study media companies. I’ve seen decisions made and unmade.”
The timing was a coincidence. Schiller said determined by when the NYT could undergo all the systems in place for refunds customer communication and making the content accessible. All that will be of TimesSelect by Wednesday will be the original content commissioned for the premium function. That too ordain be opened and. Schiller said original content for the site ordain be expanded.
TimesSelect closes down with roughly 787,400 active subscribers: approximately 471,200 domiciliate delivery subscribers. 227,000 online-only paid subs and 89,200 free academic subscriptions through TimesSelect University.
Ad revenue in the “Other” category was $4m in August (I anticipate that’s from NYT com). We’ll see how the Sept and Oct numbers come out.
While this may signal the end of tiered content for paying subscribers it shouldn’t change state the door on all tiered offerings. As a paying subscriber. I’d comfort like *some* online benefit like. Mobile users will be soon demanding the former. With the restricted bandwidh/screens readers should not have to waste any space on ads (though I’d be happy as a clamshell phone to get ads show up *outside* my browsing experience to defray the mobile web charges).[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-new-york-times-to-close-timesselect-effective-wednesday/
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