Files under General | Jan
15th
It seems to me that Felix Salmon is quite right:
My guess is simply that Murdoch wants to announce the move with a bang, not with a whimper.
He could take the present crappy website and make it free, but it wouldn’t get an enormous traffic boost, because it’s crappy.
Better to build a completely new best-in-the-world website and make that free at launch.
The first day that WSJ.com is free will be the first day that millions of people really get to explore the site.
Rupert Murdoch wants that day to be a great one for those people, not a disappointing one.
First rule in media marketing:
Don’t promote anything if it is nothing new and better to offer.