"Here’s the thing: if Slate were to make their existing experience better for people who don’t pay…by removing pagination and making the commenting system better, they would grow their audience faster and garner more readers. Easier access = more use."
The author is also assuming that the goal is _more readers_.
"Get all the readers and the money will come" is a formula that's been tried in online media for a decade now and generally doesn't work. My guess is that more pagination is almost directly correlated to more (short term) revenue in this case. I hate pagination too, but suggesting that it's an obviously bad idea ignores the business realities.
I'd like to see a test if 'killing pagination' is some killer feature that's keeping people off the site who would otherwise convert. Sadly, I doubt it.
*Disclaimer - I work for a sister company of Slate but have nothing to do with their tech decisions, other than respecting their killer tech staff.
Yeah, I was going to quote that same part. Getting more users is great, but you're still left with the question of how to monetize them.
I'm a pretty hardline user experience idealist, I hope to never host an ad on any site I run, but still, you have to be able to monetize to keep the business afloat. Whether Slate is doing just that, or actually being greedy, I don't know, but I understand the reasoning for enhancing the experience for paid users, which unfortunately inherently results in a somewhat gimped free plan.
The author is also assuming that the goal is _more readers_.
"Get all the readers and the money will come" is a formula that's been tried in online media for a decade now and generally doesn't work. My guess is that more pagination is almost directly correlated to more (short term) revenue in this case. I hate pagination too, but suggesting that it's an obviously bad idea ignores the business realities.
I'd like to see a test if 'killing pagination' is some killer feature that's keeping people off the site who would otherwise convert. Sadly, I doubt it.
*Disclaimer - I work for a sister company of Slate but have nothing to do with their tech decisions, other than respecting their killer tech staff.