You Have 2 Minutes To Read Business 2.0
from the ridiculous dept
A month ago, we wrote about how Business 2.0 made the backwards (perfectly business 1.0) decision to take themselves off the internet unless you were an AOL or Business 2.0 subscriber. Following my complaint about this, a PR person from Business 2.0 contacted me and said that for any Business 2.0 story I wanted to link to, I just needed to contact her and she would provide me with a non-subscription required link. I’m open to these ideas, so a few days later I requested just such a link… and was told that that particular article wasn’t available. I also had to wait a day to get that response – which isn’t exactly internet time around here. I explained to her why this policy was ridiculous, and how it made Business 2.0 less valuable and less likely to get more subscribers, which she promised to pass on to those in charge. In the meantime, she also gave me a subscription code to get into the magazine, which she said I can pass on to readers of the site (why? I don’t know). However, if you want to get in, use 079751240X. In the meantime, it sounds like Business 2.0 is getting even more ridiculous. In sharing their content with sister site CNN, they make it appear that their content is free. And it is, if you read quickly. The links are free for two minutes only. After which, they will reload, and they’ll want you to buy a subscription. They’re hoping (bizarrely) that readers will be so interested in the article they’ve just been kicked out of, that they’ll pay for a full subscription. Instead, they’re going to find incredibly pissed off readers who were reading an article that they suddenly (with no warning or explanation) have no more access to. Apparently, Business 2.0 is making a new artform out of pissing off your customers.
Comments on “You Have 2 Minutes To Read Business 2.0”
Business 2.0?
I don’t even look at it any more.
No Subject Given
Ahhhh the strip tease method of doing business!
Show ’em a little tease and maybe they’ll dish out for the whole thing?
All this does is annoy and make me go to google to get the story elsewhere (if I can’t already find it on here that is)
No Subject Given
I wonder if you could always just take a screen shot of the entire article. Or would that be making a copy of copyrighted work and therefore “stealing”?
No Subject Given
Why not just do something like salon does?
I still read salon, and don’t really mind having to look at a windows media player ad for 15 seconds to view the site. This cloak and dagger shit has got to go.
Suits
Empty non-technical business suits (lawyers, managers, and other “business” people) making brain-dead decisions.
No surprise.
Re: Suits
I beg to differ.
It’s a technical solution (it works) that’s a bad business decision (because it alienates customers).
That sounds more like a bad decision made by a techie or a techie-turned-business person.
Re: Re: Suits
But why go through the trouble of alienating your users, and then turn around and let someone like Mike give the world the entry code? It’s mind bending.
Your time is up ...
I’m sorry, but the comment you are looking for has taken more than two minutes to write … should you like to finish reading my opinion, please send a check for $ 14.95 to a charity of your choice …
Bye Bye Business 2.0 !
No Subject Given
now i get to not look at Business 2.0 twice as much! or, twice as not much… or, twice as little… or, ten times nuthin’.
filtering out "refresh"
It probably won’t be long before various HTTP proxy packages have an option to filter out <META http-equiv=”REFRESH”> tags. Eventually the browsers may have this too.