Wired News Discovers The Tools Of Registration Avoidance
from the so-many-registrations dept
We've explained over and over again why newspapers that think they need to force users to register to view their paper are making a big mistake. They're shrinking their ad inventory, pissing off the readers they do have and getting dirty useless data on the registrations they are getting. While many newspapers claim that their audience levels have reached the same levels as they were before they put in registration, shouldn't that make them wonder how big they would be if they had no registration at all? Instead of registrations, shouldn't they be looking to give their readers something of value? Anyway, for those of us who read an awful lot of news sites and get constantly hung up by annoying registration required sites, Wired News has put together an article of tools people use to get around registrations. Most regular news surfers probably use all of these pretty frequently, but they include services like BugMeNot and Mailinator, both of which I find myself using on a daily basis. Obviously, the decision is up to the sites themselves if they want to include registration, but it shows a decided lack of understanding of what makes the web work.
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mozilla
There is now a Mozilla Firefox extension for BugMeNot at http://bugmenot.mozdev.org/
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NYT
How much longer will we have to see the pictures of the ugly girls for the life insurance ad? Does anyone want to buy the crap?
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Grow up!
If you're reading the site's content for free, does it really take up that much of your time to just register? I mean, seriously, some of you people really need to grow up!
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Re: Grow up!
Alright, I'll bite...
Know what? You might enjoy spending hours wading through the "special offers" these marketting geniuses that run the sites flood you with...you might enjoy knowing that your every move is tracked (well, maybe not, but they sure do try).
I don't. If they want to give the info free...fine, I'll even tolerate a decent banner (and might even click on em IF...)...otherwise, why bother when another place will let you have the same info no strings?
I think you need to look around my friend...this isn't about immaturity, if you think it is, then you really need a brain transplant.
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Re: NYT
How much longer will we have to see the pictures of the ugly girls for the life insurance ad? Does anyone want to buy the crap?
Haven't you found any sites with pictures of dorpettes?
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Re: Grow up!
You're both right... but why would you even THINK of giving a newspaper site your real email address? That's insane. Even if you have to verify the validity of the email account - just make a yahoo acct crap12345@yahoo.com - let it fill with spam, who cares?
Log into the news site once, save the cookie, you're done.
Yeah, they're tracking. In my case, they're tracking someone named "Clint Eastwood" who is female and between the ages of 90-100 with a zipcode of 00001. Good luck selling that data...
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