I noticed today that I didn’t have to log in to TCPalm.com.
Baffled by this, I did a double take. Then made sure I wasn’t already logged in, had a cookie hanging around or that Firefox was already logging me in. I tried to log out, but I was already out. I clicked all over the place looking for the registration barrier, but couldn’t find it (unless I wanted to post a comment on a story, then there’s registration, which is a good thing).
So I went to Knoxnews.com to see if they drank the kool-aid too. Click, click, click, no registration!
And the Rocky Mountain News. No registration!
Is this true? Or some coy game to toy with my heart? Maybe their registration-o-matic is busted at the moment. I can’t seem to find an official Editor/Publisher story about how they’re rolling this out… so take this possible news with a grain of salt. UPDATE: It’s true! They’re testing. (Check the comments)
In retrospect, I remember reading a story on TCPalm that mentioned Drudge report had linked to it earlier in the week, and Drudge, Fark and all the other news aggregators tend to heavily prefer sites without registration. So maybe this has been up for a week or so and I just haven’t noticed.
If it’s true: UPDATE: It’s true! They’re testing. (Seriously… Check the comments)Â
HORRAY for registration roll backs!
And props to Rob Curley and his team, who broke Scripps policy by making NaplesNews.com (a Scripps site) registration free (except for commenting, email newsletters and places that it makes sense to have registration) in January of this year.
Scripps Newspapers join the trend of major metro websites rolling back their registration policies.
April 5, 2006 at 7:48 pm
A couple of things …
1. We at Scripps are experimenting with “soft” registration thresholds, and that’s what you noticed. Registration is not gone, just eased back.
2. Rob didn’t “break Scripps policy.” We all agreed to Naples’ new implementation without registration.
We didn’t make a big deal about any of this because it is an experiment, and publicity contaminates any experiment. Astute of you to notice, however.
April 5, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Hey Jay,
Thanks for clearing that up! It’ll be very interesting to see what you guys settle on. Lately it seems like registration is wavering both ways, Topix found that rolling it back gave them better and increased posts (http://blog.topix.net/archives/000106.html) while others argue that smart, simple registration works for safe participatory content(http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters).
-Will
BTW: For those that don’t know–Jay is the Director of Online Audience and Operations for Scripps Newspapers and a very cool guy.
April 6, 2006 at 12:36 pm
One last minor clarification: Though Scripps runs RockyMountainNews.com, the site never had Scripps’ registration interface, since its business operations are part of a joint operating agreement with The Denver Post.
April 7, 2006 at 4:37 pm
I’m glad to see this and have always appreciated not having to register at the Post site. As a blogger I’m *much* less likely to post a link to a site that requires registration. I’ve always found that policy to be counter-productive to the idea of driving more traffic to a site. Glad to see the TCPalm finally has seen the light.
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