Next time you want to link to a New York Times article on your blog or want to bookmark it for future reference, you no longer have to rely on a bookmarklet to generate a permanent link. On each article page, there is now a Share link that reveals links to some sites plus the possibility of obtaining a permanent link to the piece.
The automatic link options are to Digg, Facebook and Newswine. What curious choices. I would love to know what went into those decisions, possible deals or whatnot. Digg users seem mostly interested in tech news so while it may make sense to have a quick link to that service on science and technology pieces, it doesn’t make sense on other sections of the NYTimes site. The idea suggested on The Mu Life about different links depending on the part of the site makes sense. And where are quick links to Reddit, Netscape, Yahoo My Web and del.icio.us, just to name a few. Has the Facebook user demographic changed significantly in recent months away from college students? If not (and I haven’t heard of any such significant changes) then why assume that users of that system would be most likely to want to bookmark and share NYTimes articles?
In any case, the good news is that they had the sense to create a permalink option that you can use to add the page to the social bookmarking site of your choice, which would be del.icio.us in my case thanks to its automated post-to-blog feature.
{ 9 comments }
talboito 12.15.06 at 3:01 am
Like anything else, the choices available have to do with money and marketing.
By the way, if you want to be hip and with it, call that “space”, “Iconistan“.
Adrian 12.15.06 at 7:51 am
Facebook as of September lets anyone join; I couldn’t say how many non-students have done so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Opening_of_Facebook
Jacob Christensen 12.15.06 at 8:44 am
For lazy readers or just in case the article is moved – here are the two quotes form the Seattle PI article linked in #1 mentioning specifics about the cooperation:
And:
(There is also a partial quote of the latter in the Mulife page linked in the post).
Richard 12.15.06 at 9:20 am
Maybe the Facebook thing is activism: as one of my professors said, when she noticed that not a single student in the room read the NYT, “you all must be getting your information from, er… Other Sources.”
Eszter 12.15.06 at 9:58 am
Jacob, thanks for doing the research for me.:) It would be nice to have a bit more info. Or perhaps they really didn’t think about it any more carefully? It doesn’t quite address why some arguably more relevant (or at least as relevant) sites were left off the list.
Adrian, I know that Facebook is much more inclusive now, but that doesn’t mean that the users have necessarily expanded in other groups and I certainly haven’t seen any figures suggesting that college students are no longer its main user base, or that it has really taken off in other crowds. (That said, I haven’t researched sources on this.)
John Faughnan 12.15.06 at 1:27 pm
Huh?”would be del.icio.us in my case thanks to its automated post-to-blog feature.” I searched all over, couldn’t find any mention of this. Do you have a link to any docs? It might make me use my ancient account there.
britta 12.15.06 at 2:26 pm
john: check out “daily blog posting” on your settings page. :)
Eszter 12.15.06 at 4:31 pm
John, when logged in to your account on del.icio.us, click on Settings and then under Blogging select “daily blog posting”. You can see the output on my blog. Unfortunately, there is no option to customize the title so I edit the “links” word to capitalized “Links” every time. I’ve been using it for almost a year now, it looks like my first post was January 1st of this year. I think it’s great. Some people don’t like such blog content, but I appreciate it on other people’s blogs and I also find it to be a helpful backup of my own links for myself. Plus at least some of my blog readers seem to like it.
Kenny Easwaran 12.15.06 at 10:13 pm
I would guess that they include Facebook for the same reason that the SF symphony and opera give student discounts – it helps win future customers.
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