What Will Happen to Boston.com?
Yesterday, The Boston Globe announced that it is launching a subscription based service on BostonGlobe.com. According to an article posted on Boston.com, “the company has decided to split its news brands – Boston.com and The Boston Globe – into two distinct websites.”
It appears that the company plans to leave Boston.com free to use for now, and it will remain ad-supported. Boston.com will feature breaking news, sports, and weather reports, as well as classified advertising. It will also have travel, restaurant, entertainment, and hotel information. Essentially, it seems that Boston.com is going to be a beefed up version of many city .com websites found in the GeoPublishers.com network.
What will ultimately come of one of the best US city .com domain names remains of interest to me? Could the Boston Globe ultimately sell off this prized website? Time will tell if the subscription based revenue model will work.
My gut says they will have a difficult time converting Boston.com readers into paying subscribers. I don’t think it would be wise to sell of the Boston.com brand, but who knows.
What do you think will happen to Boston.com and do you think the subscription model will work?
I think the answer to your query here Elliot, can be found in what newspapers are looking to do, or use to get back in the ‘game’ – Tablets, or Newspaper Tablets. May see a lot of newspapers going this route soon of ‘Buy a subscription and get a newspaper tablet’.
“”The Tribune Co., one of the largest U.S. news enterprises, is working on a touchscreen tablet that it plans to offer to newspaper subscribers…
…Tribune aims to offer the tablet for free, or at a highly subsidized price, to people who agree to sign up for extended subscriptions to one of its papers…””
No doubt, implementing a subscription-based service is a tricky thing to pull off. The Boston Globe has a lot of ‘old school’ print expenses to pay for – i’d imagine a lot of eyes in the newspaper industry right now are watching this situ very carefully!
OK I can get the news for free at Boston.com or pay a subscription fee and have to login every time I want to check the news at Boston whatever. The WSJ does have a subscription model so it can work but you better have some unique quality content that is worth paying for. Otherwise… Lots of news is already available for free. Of course producing content is not free.
Has anyone actually worked out if that model works yet? Too early to be jumping on the bandwagon for me…
@ Colin
Not to my knowledge, although possibly the Wall St. Journal.
Interestingly enough Newsday.com just went behind a “pay” wall as well… Happened on 9/13/11:
http://www.longisland.com/articles/article.php?ID=59