More brain dead moves by the nerds in the news game

The New York Times just doesn’t get it. They want you to sign up to use Twitter.

They still want you to pay for the news but news is more or less free today.  Mashable said today that 43% of online news isn’t even coming from the newspapers. It comes from social media like Facebook and Twitter.

I follow the New York Times with Twitter. They had an interesting Tweet tonight “nytimes The New York Times Buyers Find Electric Car Brings Perks http://nyti.ms/dqrNrF “

Seemed cool so I clicked through to the story and read it.  It was an interesting story about the Nissan Leaf and some of the financial benefits for buyers. 

I thought – cool, I’ll Tweet that to you.

Not a chance. In order to Tweet from their page I would have to do the nasty thing and sign up.

Sign up! no way. I’m not signing up for anything. First what do they want? Second it’s another username and password to remember or store.

You are not going viral when you make it difficult for people.  People don’t have to Tweet from your page, since they can Retweet from Twitter.

The NYT isn’t the only paper trying to capture online readers this way. The Washington Post tries the same nerd stunt along with the other big boys in newspapers.  They just don’t get it.

The next dumbest things news sites do is not use URL shorteners for their Tweets. It’s pretty stupid to Tweet a story and most of the message is a URL. Remember, we only have 140 characters.