'New York Times' Goes Social with TimesPeople

The New York Times has added a new feature to its Web site that takes a few cues from Facebook and Digg: TimesPeople, now in beta. TimesPeople users can build up friends lists and can see a "news feed" of which stories their friends are recommending, sharing, and commenting on. Times online readers have been able to comment on stories, as well as rate reviewed restaurants and movies, for some time now, but recommending is new. TimesPeople is currently available only as a Firefox browser plug-in, but software engineers told CNET News.com that it would eventually be more widely available and without a download required. New features will be added too, but don't expect the venerable newspaper to try to compete with Mark Zuckerberg: Engineers stressed that the Times will always be an information source, not a social network. That's why the TimesPeople application is extremely light and minimal--profiles are limited to locations and user icons, and content from the social feature is limited to a "news feed" page and a drop-down menu.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9971651-36.html