Opportunity to experiment

Kuensel's website has been down for a couple of days now... There are various interesting questions to ask about newspapers' online presence. One that is of special importance in Bhutan is the relation to print sales. After all, circulation seems to be the magic word for newspapers, in terms of ad revenues.

To look at the full half of the phop, this website blackout is an opportunity for Kuensel as well as for its competing newspapers to explore the effect of the online newspaper's availability on sales of print copies. This is what we statisticians call a "natural experiment".

Here are questions that I'd explore if I were Kuensel:

• How are sales of Kuensel's print version affected on the days when the website is down? (look at the numbers, but also take into account factors like day-of-week and past sales)
• How are sales affected after the website comes back up?
• How sensitive are my online readers to such blackouts? (a survey and forum would give some ideas)

As a competing newspaper, I'd ask the following:

• How are the sales of my print newspaper affected on days when kuenselonline.com is down? (maybe people who go rushing for a Kuensel copy already buy other papers at the same time)
• How is traffic to my own website affected on days when kuenselonline.com is down?

A few comments on The Journalist article

The Journalist ran an article yesterday on cybercrime and related legislation in Bhutan. This is an area of extreme importance to all nations (see, for example, Pen-drive attacks US military), and its significance will grow exponentially in the upcoming years. Currently, Bhutan remains quite vulnerable to cybercrime.

There are a few comments I would like to make regarding The Journalist piece.

• Legislation will not stop Bhutan's vulnerability to cyber-crime. Hackers in Pakistan, China or Bulgaria will not be deterred by Bhutan's cyber-laws. If a pen-drive is infected by a virus, no law will prevent an innocent user from plugging it into the office desktop. And unfortunately, infected emails do not stop at the Phuentsholing checkpoint. 
• The article mentions that "many government websites are hacked because they don’t have uninterruptible power supply". I must say that I never heard of this one before, and I would like to know the logic behind it. Hackers most often gain access to systems by taking advantage of software bugs and by means of social engineering. While missing UPSes can cause inconveniences, I cannot see how they can be a major security threat.
• Finally, while the lack of cyber-laws can definitely discourage IT firms or businesses from investing in Bhutan, I cannot see how it will "discourage people from visiting Bhutan". 

P.S.: On the Journalist's home page, clicking on the article teaser ("OF LATE, several government and corporate websites have fallen victim to invisible hackers. read more...") brings you to the wrong article. Hopefully this is due to a typo and not to the site being hacked!