I have a love/hate relationship with the countdown displayed at the bottom of a user’s screen when purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster.
On one hand it’s useful to know exactly when the page expires and I can’t purchase tickets anymore, and on the other hand it raises my blood pressure.
I wonder whether Rupert Murdoch should add such a countdown to his web estate. The Sunday Times could give you 5 minutes free per article, and charge you 10-20p if you wanted to read more. That way, people could still link to and visit articles via Facebook, but would eventually have to pay for what they really want to read.