Huh? The New York Times is clearly struggling with the whole social media angle of its new online pay-wall -- or rather, trying to have its online cake and eat it too.
On one
hand, the NYT wants heavy users to pay for access to online content, shelling out $15 per month for continued access after reading the maximum allowed 20 articles for free; the pay wall is supposed
to take effect on March 28 (it's already up in Canada).
On the other hand, the NYT wants to keep its online content accessible through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook,
so new or casual readers can see links, follow them to the Web site, and be duly awed by the newspaper's reportage.
But this leads to a freakish third hand, as social media access
effectively allows you to circumvent the online pay-wall. The NYT's elegant solution: chop this third hand off with a hacksaw, grab cake, eat.
Like most other big news
organizations with an online presence, the NYT posts links to most of its articles to Twitter itself at http://twitter.com/nytimes, as part
of its social media strategy. Savvy! Of course, because Twitter is social media, that means other people can do things with these links -- like retweet them, so that other users can see them for
free (because they're arriving on the Web site from Twitter, see?)
That's what @freenyt did, according to PCMag, offering access to articles from all sections of the NYT via
Twitter, plus a pithy explanatory note, "Dear NYT: if you don't want people following your stories on Twitter then you probably shouldn't, you know, post 'em on Twitter."
The NYT is not amused (confused, maybe -- amused, definitely not). The Gray Lady has responded by asking Twitter to take down the offending account, which it claims is violating the NYT trademark.
While I'm no legal expert, this claim seems somewhat tendentious, as one supporter tweeted to @freenyt: "When your #paywall requires to to invent exciting, far-reaching new trademark laws,
You're Doing It Wrong, #NYT."