The New York Times allows anyone to read up to 10 articles a month for free, but you have to pay a subscription to view more than the allotted monthly article count. Before today, viewing videos also counted towards that 10 article limit.
Today, the New York Times announced that it will now allow anyone to view as many videos as they want on the website or via their various mobile apps for free. This is due to a new sponsorship deal that includes Microsoft. People who view videos will likely see ads for Microsoft products such as Windows Server 2012 before they access the video articles.
This new agreement is interesting in two ways. One is that Microsoft continues a pretty aggressive marketing and promotional campaign for product such as Windows 8, Surface and Windows Server 2012 that launched several months ago. The other is that the New York Times continues to change how content from its website is accessed by the public.
The website used to be completely free to read but in March 2011, the NYT put up a partial paywall that allowed users to access 20 articles and videos a month. A year later, the newspaper reported that it gained 500,000 new subscribers and decided to reduce the free ride on its site to just 10 articles and videos a month.
With the video section now completely free, it should be interesting to see if other newspaper websites follow the New York Times" example.
Source: New York Times | Image via New York Times