I registered for the New York Times Web site on the very first day it went live back in 1995 or 1996 or whenever it was. I never minded that the Times asked you to register — after all, they were providing valuable material that I wanted access to. If the registration helped them sell ads, so be it. As a once-and-likely-future editor at a Web publication that has experimented with the subscription model over the years, I’m also sympathetic to the company’s desire to add a new revenue stream. I can’t say I understand the logic of the new New York Times Select program, which takes the most popular and most-linked features of the Web site — mostly, the op-ed columnists — and puts them behind the gate. But who knows; time will tell the Times whether it made a good move.
In the meantime, the actual launch of the service seems to have encountered a mountain of glitches. I found that even though I followed the Times’ confusing double registration process for people who subscribe to the print edition (you have to create another account that’s apparently different from your basic login to the Web site), and successfully created the new account, I couldn’t actually get through to any of the “Select” content. The site reports me as logged in, but won’t show me the for-pay features. I thought maybe it was something to do with my Opera browser, but it seems like the problems are widespread.
I am always torn in these situations between compassion (I feel your pain, ye fellow launchers of complex new Web operations!) and schadenfreude (aha — if even the New York Times can’t get this stuff right, then all the difficult launches I’ve been involved with don’t hurt quite so much).
I’m sure they’ll get it worked out in a little time. We always did, too.
POSTSCRIPT 11:30 PM: It appears they’ve already fixed the problem — at least, my problem. I’d say that’s a pretty good bug-fix turnaround time!
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