The merging of the traditional media and social media continues apace, however The Times’ paywall threatens to render its content“anti-social” by excluding casual readers from commenting on its stories andpreventing its journalists from promoting their stories on Twitter and elsewhere. Does this matter? Can The Times and Sunday Times successfully stick two fingers up at the march towards free, social content?

Rupert Murdoch’s paywall behind which the Times and Sunday Times newspapers websites will live is almost erected. The new sites are now live for users to try, with Pocket-Lint reporting that the pay-sites will feature slimmed down content and suggesting that “basically what you're getting for your money is a smaller version of what you get already for free.” Can this work? As we have stated previously, the success of the paywall depends very much on whether users prefer to get their news free and have the opportunity to do so, via the BBC and other newspapers.

Some commentators have suggested that by hiding their content behind a paywall and away from search engines, The Times risks turning the casual reader away completely. PaidContent argue that “by scoping down their possible customer base only to readers who already know and appreciate the Timeses’ (sic) particular output, the sites appear to be falling back on their core constituencies of loyal readers, or otherwise folk who already know what The Timeses (sic) stand for.” Can this deliver enough income to sustain the newspaper?

Another major risk for The Times is that their offering, general news, just isn’t niche enough to guarantee a paid for audience. This is where it differs from the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times, both of whom have successfully erected paywalls. Adam Westbrook concludes that based on his preview of the sites, it is “almost worth paying for” but that TheTimes “won’t sew the seeds of innovation in multimedia”, opening up the risk that without a niche or innovative content, the paywall could fail to attract paying customers.

While these risks are real, almost all newspapers are plagued by growing loses – both of finance and of readers. The Times and Sunday Times lost £87m last year. Rory Cellan-Jones, writing for BBC.co.uk, a source of free online news, points out that by jumping first, The Times has created a test-bed for other newspapers to follow should it overcome the risks and make a success of this.

Anti-social? Closed? The jury is out. Risky it certainly is, though Murdoch is a man not used to failing.