The Transformation of Condé Nast | Hacker News Reader

The Transformation of Condé Nast

newrepublic.com

29 pointsmeanie14 comments

I have stopped reading Wired when they've decided to block new visitors that use ad blockers, essentially telling them to expose themselves to a proven malware distribution channel. They have relented since to a more sensible paywall with a handful of free articles every month, but they've likely lost a bunch of readers and mind share because of that initial decision.

https://www.wired.com/how-wired-is-going-to-handle-ad-blocki...

They are optimizing for profit. Your mind share is not mind share they care about because the chance of converting you into a paying customer is close to nil. You might as well not exist to them.

These practices are all about extracting more money from potential customers.

I know they need money to continue publishing stories, but I don't feel like getting nickeled an dimed by every publication wanting a subscription.

At the same time, quality journalism costs money.

I feel the same way, just trying to share some perspective.

Well, that's how people used to get magazines and newspapers for the most part. They bought an individual subscription.

That said, it's hard to see many people paying for a lot of individual subscriptions outside of mostly global brands like The Economist. On the other hand, we haven't seen aggregation that works from both the perspective of readers and publishers.

The problem being nobody is going to sub £5/mo for everything they want to read that's an insane amount of money. But mentally signing up for £5/mo or £0.05/mo is the same hurdle it seems, putting any flow like that drops users.

My youtube alone would be ~£330/mo if everyone did 1 video.

>nobody is going to sub £5/mo

The Economist runs more than that. So does The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And people used to routinely have many magazine subscriptions that were at least $1/month.

I agree expectations have changed for many people. But spending what you do on Spotify for all you can eat magazine subscriptions is actually an unsustainably low number.

And yet, they still have ads. It’s not clear what I’m paying for. They aren’t just annoying, they are a clear violation of basic journalism—you don’t publish things that will scare the advertisers away, which is almost all news.

My point was everyone can't do that. It's not a solution, it just happens to be those producers are of a size to make that choice and get some value.

The dude making a hydro turbine I watch for 4 hours, he's not getting that. I'm not going to patreon for that, it sucks but I'm honest. I patreon someone building a whole boat, seems cheap I'd do the same for just that.

We all hate advertising but really what does the alternative look like. Consciously donating just isn't going to cut it.

Blocking potential customers on their first visit is a strange profit optimization strategy.

Their articles are already ads, if an adblocker blocks their articles I would say it's working well.

Optimizing for profit, and yet it has annoyed me enough to cancel my account

Seems like almost every publication now requires you to switch off adblock and wants to enable notifications.

On the other hand, the print subscription to Wired is so cheap it's a good alternative, gets your eyes off the screen for a bit. I usually get mine with airline miles I can't use.

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