Prediction: The New York Times new digital subscription plan* will fail itself. It will fail not because readers are overwhelmingly unwilling to pay for content–they may be willing to do so and, for that reason, it makes sense for the Times to give it a shot. The Gray Lady can always pull the plug on pay plan.

So why won’t it work? Because the Times has a knack for inflexibility when it comes to subscriber account management.

The subscriber experience I glean this insight from: my own.

I’ve been an on again, off again NYT’s home delivery subscriber for more than a decade. I’ve been down to Sunday delivery for a few years and the only primary reason I still get the paper itself is because I want my kids to know what a newspaper looks/looked like and, who doesn’t love unread Sunday Times anxiety? Anywho. Over the course of my Times-subscribing days, I’ve probably lived in four or five different places. For whatever reason, I’m still bound to the original email associated to the first account and can’t change it to a current email address because, at some point, I tied another email address into the mix and things are all screwed up and entirely too complicated to even bother spelling out here. Bottom line: the New York Times still can’t handle deleting an email address associated with an old, traditional account (even when one goes so far as to try to talk to customer service to make the change), so why should I think a digital subscription won’t be marred with needless complexity and aggravation?

As a result of the above confusion, each time I’m required to log into the Times’ website can be a maddening effort in futility (which email again? is email the same as the user id? what? what? what?). I may be alone in dealing with this aggravation (probably not), but I’m not alone in being disinclined to pay for something I’m accustomed to getting for free, especially when it will come with an additional dose of aggravation.

Then there’s the Times and the Twitter. After reading the Times article detailing the new digital subscription plan, I figured I’d share it. Given the share-via-Twitter option within the Times itself, I further figured, why not? I was already logged into Twitter as well as the Times (thanks to that email address from yesteryear).

Just click on the Twitter icon and done,  I continued figuring. Then I clicked. Sure enough, I was diverted to this screen:

Seriously, NYT, why? Why would I want to log into a third layer and yet another community? I don’t and I didn’t.  And, if I’m already logged into everything already, why am I being asked to login yet again? Copy and paste works just fine.

If the Times is really going to make this digital subscription plan work, it’s got to be easy, seamless, and involve few steps. Otherwise it’ll fail, regardless of whether readers are actually willing to pay or not. And because it’s the NYT, readers may just be willing, albeit begrudgingly, to pay for it.

[*If you clicked on the article link and you’re reading this on March 28, you’ve got 19 freebies left!]

Cross-posted on usblog.havasdigital.com