This goes against the grain of what a lot of my company is doing. Some of our customers like them just fine. But they're definitely clunky. Users prefer news headlines to long articles. As monitors get higher resolution and all the things that make looking at a PC screen so tiresome by the end of the day, I think people will get over that and you'll see people more willing to spend more time on an article.
Users hate unsolicited e-mail.
They do all these direct offers and send unsolicited e-mail. But focus groups say, 'We want control over the relationship. We want control over when we get one of those offers. Users typically will pay only for financial or sexual content. Users aren't as paranoid about technology as they used to be.