The founder of Wikipedia, Mr Wales, is calling the Times paywall “a foolish experiment"

As the founder Mr Wales has multiple business interests. He's not a journalist who has to rely on his news organisation surviving - newspapers have been in decline for some time.

The free paper model, funded by advertising, has been steadily devaluing news for some time.  Online, the mindset is that news content is free.

The Times is trying to restore its premium positioning.  The catalyst for this is the launch of the iPad. The Times are putting tablets such as the iPad at the centre of their publishing strategy and they've set expectation, right from the start that content on this platform is paid for.

Under these circumstances, a free website would be an anomaly and would undermine the strategy.   

There is value in high quality, accurate journalism and tablets will allow publishers to regain control of their product and generate revenue from the journalism at their core. 

Publishers will need to adapt though, because consumers will expect to see richer, more dynamic content than is on offer currently.

The Times will also need to provide in-depth features and analysisto set them apart from basic news products and justify their premium positioning.

Yes, it's disappointing that the Times pay wall cuts off the social web.

However, the by-product of the pay wall for FT.com is thatit’s allowing the publisher to develop a deeper understanding of their users’behaviour, without contravening their privacy.  The benefit of this is improved targeting ofcontent, news gathering resources and better product development.

The risk is that The Times could lose its reach andtherefore much of its voice in the international, online news market.  However, if consumers see the value in premiumnews content, just as with valuable business information, then the pay wall will succeed.

I've been watching developments at the Times with interest. On the face of it, it doesn’t appear that the pay wall is working for the Times...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/20/times-paywall-readership

But here’s something to think about...

http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2010/07/14/the-publishing-model-is-dead-and-has-been-for-years/

When the move to a subscription model on the website was first announced, it appeared to be a desperate last throw of the dice from an outdated organisation in its death throes. News International was swimming against the flow of consumer demand and Rupert Murdoch didn’t understand the online medium. The naysayers were quick to pronounce that both were doomed.

Then, as the launch of the iPad was announced, The Times was one of the first publishers to release a paid for App. This made a lot more sense because tablet devices are the future for publishers. By setting expectation from the start that content on the shiny, new iPad platform is paid for, it gives publishers the chance to regain some control ceded to web users with their "free content” mindset and generate revenue from the high quality journalism at their core.

If the iPad (and other tablet devices) do represent the future, and this is what underpins the publishing strategy for The Times, free content on the web would have been an anomaly, so it's a smart – if unpopular -- move to erect a pay wall and eliminate this problem. The question will be how quickly consumers adopt tablet devices and how long News International can sustain this controversial strategy.

Rupert Murdoch has form in this regard. He has bet everything on a high risk strategy before. In the nascent digital TV market, he gave away free set top boxes and dishes to consumers to drive uptake of Sky digital, weighing up this initial outlay against the life time value of a customer.

He backed himself and bet the business on the fact that once people experienced Sky’s premium, multichannel TV offering with sports and movies, they would not want to go back to the dark old days of terrestrial TV.

Now 21 years old, Sky now has nearly 10 million customers and returned an operating profit of £780 million for the 12 months to 30 June 2009.

Is history about to repeat itself? It looks like Mr Murdoch may be playing a canny long game, so it would be foolish to write him off just yet.