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Salon has upped the ante in its efforts to get readers to pay for its content. The financially troubled online magazine has told its readers that if they want to read its coverage of the Bush administration and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the U.S., they’ll just have to pay. The material will be accessible only to readers who pay $30 a year for a premium, ad-free subscription. To make its crisis content more desirable, the webzine has sent its own correspondent to the Middle East. Salon editor David Talbot made the announcement in a letter to readers, in which he also tried to entice them by positing that Salon’s coverage comes free of the “flag-waving kitsch” of the major news outlets. The decision marks the company’s latest effort to bring its readers over to the paying side. Since introduction of the subscription service last spring, less and less content has been available for free, and the free content cannot be read without encountering some very obtrusive ads first. The company is not able to sustain itself on ad revenue alone in the current ad-sales climate.
FTC shuts down major cybersquatter
While thousands of legitimate web properties struggle to stay afloat, John Zuccarini has been doing quite well with his army of 5,500 sites. The problem is, the revenues were based on users accidentally typing in misspelled names of well-known sites or celebrities and getting stuck in an endless cycle of new browsers and gambling and pornography pop-up ads every time they clicked the "back" buttons on their browsers. The FTC shut down the sites Monday, though at least one, Annakurnikova.com, was still operational as of yesterday. The government is seeking to retrieve a reported $800,000 to $1 million that Zuccarini has been paid in ad revenues. Over the last two years Zuccarini has been sued at least 63 times by disgruntled celebrities, trademark owners and others seeking to shut down his site doubles. He's lost 53 times and has had to give up almost 200 domain names. Zuccarini had maintained 41 variations on the name of singer Britney Spears alone.
Mattel launches Latina Barbie site
¡Hola, Barbie! Mattel has launched a Spanish-language web site, BarbieLatina.com, aimed at the burgeoning population of online Hispanic girls ages 3 to 8. Minus an online game or two, the pastel-drenched, brand-splattered site is identical to Barbie.com. It offers dress-up games with Barbie and her coterie of ethnically diverse pals, plus Barbie-themed calendars and a channel for creating Barbie-centric stories and electronic greeting cards. But BarbieLatina.com deemphasizes online games, since some studies suggest that Latina girls tend to be more interested in reenacting real-life situations than in playing computer games, and sometimes games’ themes don’t translate well. BarbieLatina joins an array of other foreign-language Barbie sites, such as it.Barbie.com, which is in Italian, and de.Barbie.com, in German. As much as 8 percent of Mattel’s marketing budget is devoted to the internet and its web sites, and the destinations are promoted on Barbie product packaging. Visitors to the Barbie.com site spend an average of 28 minutes there.
Dot.com layoffs slacken further
The blizzard of techie pink slips appears to be letting up. According to outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs among dot.coms slipped below 3,000 last month, the lowest it has been in the past 14 months. CEO John Challenger says the slowdown in job cuts indicates that dot.coms are stabilizing, as the weakest companies are now defunct and the remaining companies are spending frugally. In all, 2,986 internet workers lost their jobs in September, 39 percent less than the 4,899 who lost their jobs in August. And that’s off substantially from April 2001, when 17,554 dot.com jobs were cut. Still, the total number of internet company job cuts made from January through September is 119 percent of all dot.com jobs cut in 2000, when 41,515 techies lost their positions. The hardest-hit last month were internet consumer service workers, of whom 1,153 were laid off. Portals fired 790 workers, technology companies let go of 505, and e-commerce fired 361.
Coke challenges post-attack ad spoofs
It may be possible to have a Coke and a smile in the globe’s most remote corners, but probably not in the world’s holiest places. But that didn’t stop a Photoshop-wielding prankster from splashing advertising images of the ubiquitous potable upon electronic pictures of the holy sites of the Middle East. The images are making the rounds of email inboxes. Upon learning of the mock ads, Coca-Cola took the unusual step of releasing a statement to the effect that the company respects the cultures and religions of the almost 200 countries where Coke is quaffed and that it wouldn’t advertise on holy sites. The ads were created before the Sept. 11 attacks, but their circulation increased greatly afterwards.
October 2, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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