The Murdoch magic touch seems to have slipped ever since he bought MySpace. Nobody has yet figured out the online media revenue puzzle but it doesn't seem to be the Murdoch model.
The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show.
Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now "bounced" to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories taht have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have falledn to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.
These figures can then be used to model how this may impact on the number of users hitting the new Times site. Based on the last available ABCe data for Times Online readership (from February 2010), which showed that it had 1.2 million daily unique users, and Hitwise's figures showing it had 15% of UK online newspaper traffic, that means a total of 332,800 daily users trying to visit the Times site.
