Social networking on the 'New York Times' Video

Social networking on the 'New York Times' Video Transcript

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>> You have been working on a new social media project for the New York Times called Times People. Can you tell me about it?

>> As Dick and I looked around the internet and other people within the company, we really...like the different social aspects whether it's, you know, different sites, whether it's Facebook or Delicious or Twitter. And we wanted to add some of those same, same things, but with, within respect to the brand and what the Times does. So Times People tries to add some of those features in adding more social dimension to the New York Times website.

>> So I guess, walk me through this. What is going to be different when I log on to the New York Times website? How is Times People gonna change the experience?

>> Basically, I'm a new user, I'm gonna end up on the New York Times site somehow, and I'm gonna find this toolbar sitting across the top of the New York Times site. But I'm, you know, I'm intrigued, so I'll create a user. I'll go with the standard Clark Kent. And we try not to ask for too many--or too much information about you. I tend to read from the science section. Maybe it's my geeky side, but um, when you go to this article, you get the normal tools here that you've always seen, but you're like, "Oh, I like this article; it's great." So you can just quickly recommended it, boom, and now that will be out there for the other people following you, and they'll be like, you know, "Oh, you know, Clark Kent, he loves to have his physics." There's other actions where you can comment on blogs and rate and review movies, restaurants, hotels, I believe, even cities, I think, lots of stuff you can do on our website.

>> Each user gets a page that has all their actions. And we've generated an RSS feed of that so that can be taken offsite. And the other offsite mechanism we have set up right now is Facebook.

>> So you can see here this morning, before we met up, I recommended a couple articles, and even commented on this one. Um, and they went directly into my Facebook mini feed. Which was great, right, like, so now my friends in Facebook who don't read the New York Times can see that I still, or can still see the Times People actions that I've done and become interested, or if they are interested, read about the [indecipherable] or whatever I commented on that day.

>> So what aspects of what social sites like Facebook and Digg, what were particularly inspiring when you were working on creating Times People?

>> Um, I know that there was one in particular. I mean, I think there's a little bit of a difference in the Times that the Times is a site that produces a lot of its own content. So we're really a content company, whereas something like Digg is kind of a metal layer. And so, uh, there's not a direct corellation between that, but I think the--and so while we think like a site like Facebook is great, we don't, you know, we're not gonna be a social network; we're really gonna continue to be a news and information site. But the opportunity to add a social dimension that is already present in the news for our site is what we were really looking to leverage.