It seems as though Zite isnt as popular with publishers as first thought. A growing list of US publishers have sent cease-and-desist letters to Zite, including the Associated Press, Dow Jones, Gannett and Getty Images, for copyright and trademark violations.
Zite has been pulling stories from all these publishers without their approval. The key issue here for the publishers is that their content is being stripped and they arent seeing any of the financial rewards they would see if users were reading their web versions.
“By systematically reformatting, republishing, and redistributing our original content on a mass commercial scale without our permission in your iPad application, Zite directly and adversely impacts our businesses,” the letter says.
Zite has promised that they will change and comply with publishers requests, but I cant see this startup gaining any traction from here on out. Overall, its a shame!
This chart by Michael DeGusta provides a great illustratation of why the New York Times paywall is going to fail. I know there are a lot of reports that people are willing to pay for news, but Im not sure they are happy to pay this much.
In the chart you will notice annual prices from a variety of services in different sectors. All of these services allow users to access via the web and across multiple devices.
For instance, I used Rhapsody’s $14.99 plan which allows 3 devices (e.g. iPhone & iPad), as opposed to their $9.99 plan that allows only one. I think that’s a fair apples-to-apples comparison of how much different providers are asking for full access. Though in case there was any doubt how out of line The Times’ pricing is, even their “NYTimes.com + Tablet App” (i.e. no phone app access) is still 25% higher than the Wall Street Journal’s all access plan.
I’ve also added the explicit names of each subscription plan below for more clarity, as well as corrected the annual Dropbox price.
