This past Monday, The New York Times introduced a paywall for content. Times readers can now view up to 20 items for free – whether those items are articles, slideshows, or videos. However, after those initial 20 items, readers will be charged somewhere in the range of $15 and $35, depending on what device they read their news on.

While, it’s true, I’d rather not pay the subscription, I have to admit that the following headline on TheOnion.com summed the situation pretty well:

NYTimes.com’s Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move

However, that bold business move cost the paper $40 Million dollars to implement. And it can be bypassed by simply deleting 12 characters from a URL.

The salvation of the news industry sounds pretty dumb, huh?

If you can’t be bothered to delete the characters “?gwh=numbers” from the URL, don’t worry, that’s not the only way to keep your content free. The paywall doesn’t come into effect if you enter the Times’ website through a URL posted on social media sites either. This has prompted readers to create of Twitter accounts such as @FreeNYT, which exist solely to tweet links to every NY Times story.

You can also get your free content through search engines – which allow you an extra five articles, per browser. So switching from Chrome to Safari to Firefox will allow you to keep reading and reading until you just can’t read anymore.

Though, if you’re loyal to one browser, you can always just clear your browser cookies or use a ‘bookmarklet’ like NYTClean, allowing you to bypass the paywall in just one click.

So at this point you might be thinking that the Times – a company desperately trying to build revenue through their online property – just blew $40 Million dollars, right?

Well they claim to know about the gaps in their paywall and more than that – they’re leaving them open intentionally in order to encourage an “open web experience.”

Ok, I’ll buy that – after all social syndication is still an important part of their business model – but how do they expect to make money?

Well, in simple terms, the paper is willing to bet that we’re too lazy to go through the effort of getting around the paywall and eventually we’ll just pay for it. And, sadly, they may be right.

How about you? Are you planning to use any of the ‘work arounds’ or will you buy a subscription?

Amid the clutter and decidedly frenetic pace of marketing innovation, this year you can detect an undercurrent of emphasis on readability and control over content – let’s call it “slow content” for the moment, in the spirit of the slow food movement – that hearkens back to Cluetrain and even beyond in it’s emphasis on giving the reader control over what is they want to read. Here are a few snapshots: Publishing platforms such as Treesaver.net that let you publish your content once for consumption on many devices, with an interface that looks more like a cross between the clean look of your Kindle and a well-designed magazine. Plug-ins for your browser such as Readability enable you to turn a cluttered content page into a clean, well-presented page with more in common with a well-designed newspaper than a web page. And iPad apps such as Flipboard,  embody the “instabook” notion – using your own search criteria, for example, the users you follow on Twitter – by publishing an up to date magazine with well-designed, flippable pages.

For marketers in categories with complex buying processes, content is obviously a key resource for the buyer. By 2011, everyone’s on board with that idea. Increasingly, we’re also looking at content curation as a way to manage the multiple voices the buyer seeks: influencer, community and yes, the voice of the vendor’s brand. Last year curation was a big story at SxSW, and this year it’s even bigger. On the cutting edge, though, is the idea of giving the buyer more control over how the content is presented and consumed. With Readability, the buyer can strip out the ads and save any content for consumption later in a more readable format. With Flipboard, a buyer can follow a single Twitter feed that could publish a valuable buying resource on a day-by-day basis. With Treesaver, your buyer can migrate your buying content across any device they choose to use to consume it. And with the evolution of Webfonts and Typekit, along with the capabilities of HTML5, they can get the same well-ordered, easy to read experience they’ve grown used to on their eBook readers.

With capabilities like these, over time, the buyer will learn to expect more than a vendor’s ever-increasing collection of PDFs with their locked-down design and formats. For innovative brands, this may be the time to start re-thinking your content presentation strategy. Experience matters – and from what we’re seeing at SxSW, innovators are working hard to improve the reading experience.

We also took a look at how social media helped turn the low budget horror film “Paranormal Activity” into a box office success, as well as take on the discussion of Pepsi’s new iPhone App for Amp Energy drink, “before you score,” that aims to help guys land women. Is it in bad taste or just good targeted marketing?

Check out these articles that we’ll be referencing during the show:

Paranormal Activity Rides the Social Web to Millions at the Box Office

Pepsi and AMP: We Apologize If Our App Was in Bad Taste

An Open Letter to Elisa Steele EVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Yahoo Inc. on the New “The Internet Is You” Yahoo Marketing Campaign

Moderator:
Doug Zanger

Speakers:
Mike O’Toole, President, PJA @motoole1
Robert Davis, VP, Digital Marketing, PJA @heyrobertdavis
Phil Johnson, CEO, PJA @philjohnson