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By silicon.com, 9 September 2003 12:59

NEWS 09.09.98: The Wall Street Journal website has chalked up 250,000 paying subscribers. The site was launched in April 1996 by Dow Jones - the US publisher of financial and business news - and is one of the largest fully paid subscription services on the web. Dow Jones chairman and chief executive, Peter Kann, said the latest milestone was reached only four months after membership reached the 200,000 mark. The site can be found at www.wsj.com. Kann also announced the launch of a European version of the site's home page, at www.wsje.com. 09.09.03: The Wall Street Journal has long been the subject of envious looks from rival media groups who would give their right arm to repeat the subscription success of the WSJ, which now boasts around 700,000 paying subscribers. Most UK newspapers now offer premium paid-for content on their sites - from crosswords to news archives - but few appear to have given serious thought to gating the entire site. The FT has come the closest to date, and the results are impressive, if not stellar, but that owes much to its unique place in the market. The advantage the WSJ had was that its users never knew any different. While other sites were entirely free for the first few years of operation the WSJ never created that 'we used to get this for free, so why do we now have to pay' stand-off with its readers by launching as a subscription service from the off. The arguments for and against are clear. Newspapers from the newsstand cost money, so why shouldn't the same be true for the same content online? For a paper which is often bought on a subscription basis - e.g. a company's standing order for the FT and WSJ - the cultural shift is nominal, but with the bought-on-a-whim, picked up at the train station style papers it's more of a plunge into the unknown for the publisher - especially while we lack a credible standard for micro-payments, enabling a pay-as-you-go billing process. The bottom line is that a switch to a subscription model equates to an immediate slump in user numbers, and less ad sales clout, for many that will be the factor that keeps them free - that and the inability to go back in time and ape the WSJ by charging from the off.