7 marketing headlines you won’t see this decade

1. Visitors demand paywall

It’s a trend that industry insiders have predicted for years, and it’s finally reached a tipping point: Website visitors are fed up with free content. As the publicly available Internet declines, websites that require visitors to create accounts are seeing a spike in traffic.

Many free websites are rushing to catch up, adding “paywalls” and “fangates,” finally giving visitors a chance to register, subscribe, or pay with a credit card before viewing content.

But Registration Now! spokesman John Barlow says sites should be doing more. “If a website can’t add a popup window with a signup box, they should at least require more fields on contact forms,” he said.

2. BingBook+ reaches 50 million users

Microsoft’s new social network has seen a steady climb in new members since it launched on Monday. “Clearly, there was an unmet need for a new social network,” CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview this morning. “We’re simply filling that void.”

Other social networks are responding with new features. Facebook 3D is scheduled to launch this month, and Twitter has announced that its recent acquisition of BlackBerry will enable it to start selling pagers.