The Lowdown

Because knowing is half the battle

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The Daily
A new virtual newspaper for the iPad launched last week called "The Daily." This
newspaper--a hybrid between traditional newspaper publishing and modern,
electronic publishing via iPad apps--is supposedly the answer to the newspaper
industry's recent woes. Readers can buy a yearly subscription, or pay for each
downloaded issue.

http://www.thedaily.com

The biggest challenge with paid-to-play content is that there are so many sources
of content, news, information, etc., that it is very easy to find a source that's
free if you don't want to pay. This is actually the reason why it is so hard for
newspapers to make money with their websites--users feel like they shouldn't
pay for the information they get off of the Internet, and they simply move to
another website when their favorite magazine or newspaper begins charging a
subscription.

Another aspect of publishing in the age of Social Media is that publishers

need their readers to be able to share the content that they like, so that their
friends and colleagues will read it too. With that in mind, The Daily has made
it possible for their subscribers to share its content with their non-subscriber
friends, probably assuming that they would start to see conversion as those non-
subscribers realized what The Daily had to offer.

Well, here is a new twist on the "I'm not paying" mentality: There is a blog now
that indexes the content that can be found in each issue of "The Daily." It can be
found here:

http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/

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Contact: 32bpwr3@gmail.com
The blog appears to be quite controversial. Check out the creator's post about it
here, and pay close attention to the comments below it:

http://waxy.org/2011/02/the_daily_indexed/

What does this mean?

This is another example of why paywalls do not work on the Internet.

Takeaways
Publishers should see this as an example of what happens when your paywall
has a "loophole." There is no real easy fix for this, because The Daily relies on
its subscribers to spread the good word about their publication to their friends.
If you limit who can view the content on the web, then you limit the virality of
your content. Yet, you allow blogs like this to index and link to the content and
basically mirror each issue.

I hope that instead of taking action against "The Daily: Indexed," the people
behind the Daily will work with this blogger to ensure that they are able to keep
up their work. By sharing the content of this electronic newspaper, this blogger is
actually helping.

_____________________________________________
Contact: 32bpwr3@gmail.com