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Wired News has a story up today on BugMeNot.com and other services that help visitors get around the sign-in requirements at news sites like LATimes.com. In the piece, the LAT's Elaine Zinngrabe, general manager of latimesinteractive.com, says she knows that visitors find the registration aggravating.
"I think if people are annoyed at anything, it's that it takes them the minute or whatever they have to do it," she said. "I'm sympathetic to it. We're constantly looking at how to make the process easier."Zinngrabe sees registration as a sort of trade off for viewing online content. She's not thrilled about BugMeNot and services like it, but said she's not worried about users sharing login information. This is, in part, because the Los Angeles Times' site lets users personalize their news by signing up for newsletters and getting local weather.
"It doesn't make you necessarily want to share, because you want to get what you want to get, and you don't want other people messing around with that or changing it or whatever," she said.
No word in the story on that rumored plan to stop charging for Calendar stories and columns. For what it's worth, I'm not aware of any spam I get that originates with the LAT site, and I don't see the popups anymore since installing the Google toolbar. The cookie takes care of logging me in 90% of the time, so the step doesn't affect me. What bugs me are sites where I have to re-register repeatedly.
Link via I Want Media