The announcement by executives at the Financial Times that they would be offering non-subcribers a chance to view a limited amount of content for free, reveals the growing changes connected to the subscription-based online model.
While the New York Times (NYT) also recently opened up their content for free as well, they also kept a part of it fee-based, specifically their older archives, which have a built-in research audience that are more than willing to pay for the archived content.
Financial Times also believes they can open up their content while mainting their subscription model, because they target the higher-end business user also willing to pay for their content.
What the Financial Times is doing is offering people the chance to read five articles a month, if they want to read more, at that time they are asked to register with the site. If they register, it gives them the opportunity to read 25 more articles for free, before being asked to subscribe if they want to access more content.
If there is no action to subscribe taken by the visitor, they are only allowed to visit the FT.com home pages until a new 30-day period begins.
This is all probably being done to allow bloggers or online writers the opportunity to access articles and link to them, giving the FT.com site more traffic juice.
A lot of FT.com's strategy will depend on what Rupert Murdoch does with The Wall Street Journal Online site when News Corp. (NWS-A) takes over Dow Jones & Co. (DJ).
News Corp. seems to be targeting a more general business audience than CNBC and Financial Times does, as they're already marketing themselves as the business network for the masses. That means they're probably going to change the Wall Street Journal site to a open-walled site, while possibly keeping some aspect of it fee- or subscription-based.
In the end, how FT.com is viewed as a brand will determine whether they'll keep their content behind a wall. If the high-end business people determine they offer something unique in contrast to the Wall Street Journal online site, they may be willing to continue subscribing. If they consider the FT.com site about the same as the WSJ.com site, they probably will just use the open WSJ.com site - assuming that's what is done with the site.
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