The Industry Standard - WSJ.com goes free, removes subscription wall - Comments

Did not happen. Unfavorable

David Kuan — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:35:29 -0500

Did not happen. Unfavorable judgment can now be rendered.

David is right. Murdoch has

Andrew Birmingham — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:59:40 -0500

David is right. Murdoch has made is clear repeatedly that the journal will not be free. In fact the sentiment is now switching pack towards paid content especially for Finance sites. I think this prediction is already dead.

This is a done deal for

David Kuan — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:48:08 -0500

This is a done deal for UNFAVORABLE judgment when betting closes (ROI=44 days). Murdoch made the following statement today.

"One way we are planning to take advantage of online opportunities is by offering three tiers of content. The first will be the news that we put online for free. The second will be available for those who subscribe to wsj.com. And the third will be a premium service, designed to give its customers the ability to customise high-end financial news and analysis from around the world."

Full article: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures/stories/2008/2397940.htm#transcri...

Unofficially, one can bypass the subscription wall via spoofing as redirect from Digg or Google. However, this does not meet the criteria and spirit of this prediction.

Quoting from the articles

Bradley Baker — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:21:31 -0400

Quoting from the articles that David linked:

"although the company will eventually make some content available only to paying subscribers of its newspaper or Web site." (ap article)

"with full access to subscriber content for a limited time only." (tradingmarkets article)

Looks like the first crumbling of the wall, but it's not down yet.

This prediction was made

David Kuan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:07:55 -0400

This prediction was made during the infancy of TIS. So, does the WSJ.com Mobile Reader (launched today) counts towards meeting the criteria of this early prediction?

http://online.wsj.com/public/page/mobile_download.html
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jMrhVuyIxkAKeG1N1kwB3ggJdc1AD92LER2O0
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1833955/

This prediction is already

Andrew Birmingham — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:46:00 -0400

This prediction is already as good as dead so how about handing over the loot early. By way of evidence I offer the following quote from the Sun King from D6 quoted on paidcontent.org May 28, 2008

“When I saw how much money they were making, I changed my mind on it. People can pay a lot more than we are charging, from $50 a year to $150 million...We have 2000 great journalists....if we can’t fashion something great out of it, then we have something wrong,” he said, elaborating on the premium product that WSJ can build on. "

Could be, but that's what

Eric Hill113600 — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:34:00 -0500

Could be, but that's what the NY Times thought, too. Perhaps the WSJ has a more robust lead-gen operation that would be crazy to let go of at this point, i.e. a more targeted user base for vendors.

They'll make more serving

ross valenti — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:05:41 -0500

They'll make more serving targeted ads to segmented users than they will off of subscription revenue.

Times Select went away. WSJ

Eric Hill113600 — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:15:11 -0500

Times Select went away. WSJ has simply got to do this. Walled off subscriptions sites are going to lose money when you consider how the ad dollars are flowing to online businesses. And, even though leads are king, the more traffic you get the better chance you'll serve those ads and get those leads. Murdoch will change this, I'm certain.

WSJ.com goes free, removes subscription wall

John Byrne — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:40:53 -0500

Judgment made on Jan. 8, 2009: WSJ.com got a new face lift last year, but still requires customers to pay to access the entire site. The community correctly predicted the WSJ.com will remaina subscription-based service. -- The Industry Standard

Original prediction: Rupert Murdoch can change his mind, right? He figuring out a way not to forego all those lucrative online subscription fees and go for scale as well.