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NYTimes.com launches TimesPeople to connect better to Facebook

Posted: 19/06/08 By: Oliver Luft

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Developers from The New York Times have built a plug-in for the Firefox web browser that allows users to update their social networking profiling pages with information about stories they are reading on NYTimes.com.

TimesPeople is peer review and recommendation service (Think mini Digg). It allows users to build simple profiles on the NYT site then clip their favourite stories, comment on articles and review films, music, hotels and places to eat.

The function has similarities to MyTelegraph's profile pages but is perhaps more similar to clippings pages of Guardian.co.uk reporters and the functionality that Pluck is bringing to that site.

The new tool was built to also add some of the social media aspects of Delicious, Twitter and Facebook to the Times website, senior Times software developer Derek Gottfrid told Beet TV.

Each action executed on the profile page will also register in the user's Facebook mini-feed and can also be exported as an RSS feed.

TimesPeople also allows users to link to friends and have a Twitter-style feed of what they are doing on the profile page.

The technology is currently in a public beta testing phase and will eventually be available without the need to down load the browser update.

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