Digg Links Bring Free Access to Wall Street Journal Content
Thanks to Digg you’ll now be able to read every article about Ron Paul that the Wall Street Journal ever publishes. Digg founder Kevin Rose announced Tuesday evening that Digg buttons are now displayed across the entire WSJ site, allowing registered users to submit stories directly to Digg. Even better, links coming from Digg will get free access to the WSJ content.
So far Digg is only site to get a button, but a Digg representative corrected an earlier CNet story, saying that this was not an exclusive deal, which means buttons for Reddit, del.icio.us and other social sites could be coming as well.
The free access links appear to work by checking the referring URL. For instance this link was copied straight from a Digg article but will only get you to the free preview. Head over to the actual Digg post and click the same link and you’ll go straight through. In short, it doesn’t look like there will be a way to generate links along the lines of the old New York Times Link Generator.
But that may not matter. Apparently Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of the WSJ, plans to open up the whole WSJ site for free anyway.
To see how the new Digg buttons work from the WSJ end, head over to TechConsumer which has some screenshots that walk through the process of submitting directly from the WSJ site. I haven’t tested it since I don’t have a WSJ subscription, but it looks exactly the same as any other site (like this one) that has Digg buttons.
Eventually, if Murdoch makes good on his promise, this won’t end up being a big deal, but for now, if you want free access to WSJ content, you’ll have to rely on your fellow Diggers to submit it first — hopefully you enjoy reading about Ron Paul.
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