How to Charge for News Online? Ask the Tech Giants
Some of the world’s most prominent technology companies are offering suggestions to publishers on how they can charge readers for news online.
IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. — a company some newspapers blame for helping dig their financial hole — responded to a request by the Newspaper Association of America for proposals on ways to easily charge for news on the Web.
But building the infrastructure for charging readers is one part of the equation. The other part looks more challenging: getting publishers to make the leap and stop giving news out for free on the Web.
Times Web Ads Show Security Breach
OVER the weekend, some visitors to the Web site of The New York Times received a nasty surprise. An unknown person or group sneaked a rogue advertisement onto the site’s pages.
The malicious ad took over the browsers of many people visiting the site, as their screens filled with an image that seemed to show a scan for computer viruses. The visitors were then told that they needed to buy antivirus software to fix a problem, but the software was more snake oil than a useful program.
Twenty Percent Of Tweets Mention Brands, Products
The debate is still out on Twitter’s effectiveness as a marketing tool, but new data from Penn State plays right into the company’s move to fully open users’ status updates to advertisers. Companies are already getting targeted, free advertising on Twitter, as the research found that 20 percent of all tweets—or one out of every five updates—mention specific brand names or products.
