The New York Times plans to introduce a metered billing system on its Website sometime next year. The newspaper will begin to charge frequent visitors to its Website along the lines of what the Financial Times does on FT.com , which starts charging people who visit the site more than 10 times a month. But the new model is unlikely to move the needle on the New York Times’ digital revenues. Details are spare on how exactly the model will work, but it is possible to do some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations. According to comScore, NYTimes.com attracted 12.4 million U.S. visitors in December, 2009, down from 15.4 million in September, 2009. If you include all the sites the New York Times operates, including About.com, Boston.com, and the sites of various local papers, the numbers jump to 52.8 million U.S. visitors in December. But right now the company is only talking about putting up a metered billing system on the NYTimes.com proper. So we are talking about an audience of 12.4 million in the U.S. and about 20 million worldwide. The average visitor in the U.S. comes to the site 3.7 times a month, a number which has been steadily rising. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the NYT adopts the same policy as the FT, and only charges people who visit more than 10 times a month. Let’s also be super-generous and estimate that 20 percent of its audience comes to the site more than 10 times a month, or roughly 3 million people in the U.S., or 4 million worldwide. Now subtract about a million print subscribers since they won’t be charged anything extra to read the paper online. How many of the 2 to 3 million loyal readers who are left will actually pay for the online edition, and how much will they pay? Back in 2005 to 2007, when the NYT was offering a partial pay wall through TimesSelect, it got 210,000 readers to pay $50 a year. That added $10.5 million to its top line. The FT.com charges about $25 a month to frequent visitors. But the FT is a financial publication and, like the WSJ, readers are willing to pay more for that information. The NYT appeals to a broader demographic, so let’s assume the pricing will fall within the range of $10 to $15 a month. If the New York Times gets 10 percent of its frequent readers who aren’t already subscribers to pay $10 a month that would come to as much as $3 million in extra revenue worldwide (300,000 X $10), or an extra $9 million a quarter. In the third quarter of 2009, the New York Times recorded $39 million in Internet advertising revenues across all of its newspaper properties. Adding $9 million would be a significant jump. But what you also have to take into account is that those Internet advertising revenues were down by $8.8 million from the year before due to the advertising recession and the decline in classifieds revenues. So at $10 per online subscriber, the New York Times would only be replacing the online advertising revenues it lost last year. If it can charge $15 or get more than 300,000 subscribers, the numbers start to make more sense. And if the meter drives more people to subscribe to the print paper, that’s even better for the New York Times (and, in fact, I suspect that growing print subscribers is really what this is all about). However, there is one last part to this equation. How many of those 3 million readers who hit the meter will simply stop coming to the NYTimes.com and find their news elsewhere? To the extent that the New York Times drives away a portion of its online audience, its online advertising revenues will drop as well. Getting that balancing act right will be crucial to the success of this metered scheme.
Are you tired of living in public , sick of all the privacy theater the social networks are putting on, and just want to end it all online? Now you can wipe the slate clean with the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine . (Warning: This will really delete your online presence and is irrevocable). Just put in your credentials for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or LinkedIn and it will delete all your friends and messages, and change your username, password, and photo so that you cannot log back in. The site is actually run by Moddr , a New Media Lab in Rotterdam, which execute the underlying scripts which erase your accounts. The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a digital Dr. Kevorkian. On Facebook, for instance, it removes all your friends one by one, removes your groups and joins you to its own “Social Network Suiciders,” and lets you leave some last words. So far 321 people have used the site to commit Facebook suicide. On Twitter, it deletes all of your Tweets, and removes all the people you follow and your followers. It doesn’t actually delete these accounts, it just puts them to rest. The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine runs a python script which launches a browser session and automates the process of disconnecting from these social networks (here is a video showing how this works with Twitter). You can even watch the virtual suicide in progress via a Flash app which shows it as a remote desktop session. You can watch your online life pass away one message at a time. Taking over somebody else’s account via an automated script, even with permission, may very well be against the terms of service of these social networks. From the FAQs: If I start killing my 2.0-self, can I stop the process? No! If I start killing my 2.0-self, can YOU stop the process? No! What shall I do after I’ve killed myself with the web2.0 suicide machine? Try calling some friends, take a walk in a park or buy a bottle of wine and start enjoying your real life again. Some Social Suiciders reported that their lives has improved by an approximate average of 25%. Don’t worry, if you feel empty right after you committed suicide. This is a normal reaction which will slowly fade away within the first 24-72 hours. The light-hearted video below explains the benefits of committing Web 2.0 Suicide and disconnecting from “so many people you don’t really care about.” Unplugging from your social life online will leave you more time for your real life, which you’ve probably been neglecting. With the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, you can “sign out forever.” Not that we are recommending you do this in any way. But you may enjoy the video. web 2.0 suicide machine promotion from moddr_ on Vimeo . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 may call itself the only console to stream Netflix , but all that could be changing — and soon. As Netflix continues to pull in new subscribers (and cash flow) like it’s no big deal , the company is apparently looking to spread its wings even further by integrating its wildly popular Watch Instantly feature into “a device already owned by a large number of consumers.” Naturally, the most fitting candidates for that would be Sony’s PlayStation 3 or Nintendo’s Wii , though the company has yet to come forward with anything concrete. Just so know you, Netflix credits the Xbox 360’s streaming integration as the main reason some 2.4 million customers have signed up since late 2008, so it’s more than apparent that it loves the game console. Any bets for when this will go down, or are you just plugging your ears in order to avoid potential disappointment? [Via Joystiq ] Filed under: Home Entertainment Netflix hints at Watch Instantly integration on ‘already-popular device’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
LA-based Sometrics has secured a Series B round of venture capital, led by Walt Disney Company-affiliated Steamboat Ventures and joined by previous investors The Mail Room Fund and Greycroft Partners . In total, $4 million was injected into the fledgling company, we’ve learned. That brings the total invested in the startup to $5.55 million . The first round was raised back in May 2008 . It was the first investment made by The Mail Room Fund, a joint venture fund established by William Morris Agency, Accel Parners and Venrock. Sometrics is one of many companies looking to optimize the way social networks, gaming platforms and virtual worlds are being monetized. The startup markets tools that allow publishers and brands to manage ad inventory across social web platforms, optimize campaigns through audience analysis and targeting, as well as gain ’social intelligence’ about the performance of those campaigns through detailed analytics. The latter part is what the company started out with, by giving social app developers a way get an overview of the number of page views and unique visits, installs and uninstalls, age of users, gender of users, number of friends, location of users and more for their Facebook and MySpace apps. The company has since diversified and broadened its offering, and now does a little bit of everything that publishers and advertisers can tap into to get more ROI from advertising campaigns on social gaming sites, community sites and from sales of virtual goods across the board. Sometrics appear to be gravitating towards a focus on game developers, particularly with their Virtual Currency Manager product. The startup already boasts a number of partnerships with players in the online gaming industry, such as Playdom and Outspark . Virtual goods and social advertising are an interesting field that’s poised for growth, but there’s a lot of competition in the space, with companies like SocialMedia.com , Lookery , OfferPal Media and Pubmatic offering services similar to what Sometrics markets. Maybe the pedigree of co-founder and CEO of Sometrics, Ian Swanson , can help the company stand out among them; Swanson used to run business development for AOL-owned Userplane and was an executive at Sprint before that. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
OnLive , the gaming company trying to reinvent the Games On Demand service, has announced a Series C round of venture financing from AT&T Media Holdings, Inc. , Lauder Partners , Warner Bros. , Autodesk , and Maverick Capital . Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital have participated in previous rounds of financing as well. OnLive did not disclose the size of financing. OnLive has been working on the launch of its cloud-based OnLive Game Service, which delivers the latest games instantly through the MicroConsole TV adapter. Unveiled in March at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, the OnLive Game Service recently went into beta testing and is speculated to officially launch this winter. Palo Alto-based OnLive raised $16.5 million in previous funding. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
