Alan Abbey, Internet Editor of the Jerusalem Post, wrote us last week to say that his newspaper has backed off requiring that user (and use ‘cookies’) before they can see his site’s Lastest News, Editorials, Op-Ed, and Columnists Web pages. Although Abbey notes that registration has been unpopular among his site’s users, 300,000 have registered, mostly from the US and Canada.
We believe that the JPost dove too fully into requiring user registration. That’s a mistake many other newspaper sites are also making. It forgot that user registration, although it benefits the publisher (and rarely in current usages benefits the users), is nonetheless a tollgate. A free tollgate, but one requiring an identity check. It’s bound to thwart many users’ from going farther into the site. the JPost was right to move that ID check deeper towards the back of the site.