A small step for some, a giant leap for an old giant

The New York Times has added buttons for Digg, Newsvine and FacebookThe old and renowned New York Times hasn’t been known for being in the forefront when it comes to embrasing citizen/social media. Therefore the new change, minor as it might seem, is indeed a big leap in this old giant’s development. The NY Times has added buttons to its stories allowing users to send them to digg, newsvine and facebook. As John Cook points out, it’s the first time the paper has enabled users to comment on its articles on third party websites.

And that is just the start. A new section of the site will be devoted to “My Times”, “where the best minds in journalism helps you edit the web”.

My Times at the New York Times

What My Times seems to be is a personalized page where you can collect your favourite bits of the NY Times along with other material from the web via RSS. Here’s what the “First Look blog” says about My Times in its current beta.

My Times Beta is a new service that lets you organize New York Times content, as well as content from around the web, on your very own page. This personalized service makes it easy for you to read all that you like, from one central place. You can further personalize your my Times page by adding up-to-date weather information of your city, movie showtimes in theaters near you, or display your favorite flickr photos.

Though it doesn’t say how much you’ll be able to interact with this material on the site – for instance can you post comments? Articles? Columns?

An interesting development, none the less. The NY Times may be behind, but they seem to finally have got it, and are putting a lot of effort in to catch up.

Another cool thing they’re doing (though not related to citizen media) is the Times Reader, a separate software for an optimal reading of the NY Times, a beta version now available for download. Not sure it’ll be a success, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

lotta

Web veteran, journalist, blogger since 1998, loves creativity and originality, photography and her family. [More]

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