A quick rant to the boys at SiliconBeat

There are so many things in life that can frustrate you if you allow them to, hence the common (and appropriate) advice to ‘let go of the little things’.

Then, there are the things that irk you so much for some subconcious reason that they just want to make you throw up your hands, scream and shake the bejesus out of your monitor.

This is one of them for me.

Over on the About page of SiliconBeat.com, in the description of Matt Marhsall’s background, is a link to his news stories over at the SJ Merc. In parens after the link are the words (my emphasis) “subscription probably required to view them”.

Subscription, as I’ve written before, is generally understood to imply that a periodic payment is required to access/receive goods or services on a periodic basis (though admittedly, this is changing somewhat as the term has been co-opted w.r.t. Feeds and Aggregators). This is not the case with KRD properties, even for content that is greater than 7 days old (which are sold individually or on a tiered/bulk buy scheme). The right word here is “registration”.

If you guys don’t get it right, you can’t expect others (like Google News) to, which only hurts you in the end in the minds of end-users.

Update: My monitor, though still cowering on the corner of my desk, let out a big sigh of relief when MichaelB’s comment flashed on… its… umm… face. Yes, I’ve taken this as far as it’s going to go (and far further than it needed to go).