Virtually Here

I can’t exactly remember when New Media got separated from Old Media and allowed their own umbrella name and status. My best recollection is that it was sometimes in the mid-90’s. Film, newspapers, television, etc were filed away in the ‘relics’ section and podcasts, multimedia presentations, netcasts, social- interactive sites and pull vs push technology - elbowed their way to the front and were hailed and branded as New Media.

Well, as it turns out, some of these Old Media institutions are not going to go quitly into the sunset but have instead launched their own initiates to attempt to level the playing field a bit.

The New York Times recently announced their offering named TimesPeople. This, still in Beta, product is an attempt to establish an online social network for - you guessed it - readers of New York Times. To quote NYT themselves;

“But it’s not a social network like Facebook or MySpace — you won’t have Times friends, and it won’t get you Times dates. Instead, you’ll assemble a network of Times readers. Then you’ll be able to share interesting things on NYTimes.com with others in the network.”

You mark articles you find interesting, find arcticles tagged by others, share supplemental information/feeds/videos/blogposts, etc. It’s an interesting concept and I am personally all for this kind of convergence culture (that will be five dollars for those words please) as long as it’s not a forced fit. In this case it seems as it may allow a very well established news institution to get their readers excited about the ability to interactively and collaboratively share their thoughts on articles and information.

Any tool that enhances our ability and increases our interest in reading and keeping up with what happens in the world around us is, per this writer’s definition, a step in the right direction.  Welcome to New Media NYT. What took you so long?

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