NYT gets Widgetized

I'm not certain that the description of this blog includes promises of covering unique online interfaces, but I will make sure it does. I discovered today that the New York Times forwarding a trend that has been around since the internet first took off - namely the concept that users want to take the time to customize their own interfaces, and find a one-etop shop for all of their news needs through the ordering and customization of specific modules or widgets.

Welcome to My Times



It seems that the Google and Facebook driven widgetization of the internet has extended to one of the most venerable media companies that's been around for 150 years. New York Times is an interesting place to provide users to set up their media consumption plus RSS feeds, weather, stock information, and movie information. New York Times adopted the correct approach, which is to allow content from other providers.

New York Times usage will never get as large as iGoogle or Facebook, however they do have the third largest daily readership in the United States according to Burrelle's Luce with 1,120,420 daily readers and 1,627,062 Sunday readers. See the circulation numbers for the top 100 newspapers here. According to the paper, they have 787,000 subscribers to the website, though only 227,000 pay. The site gets 13 million unique visitors per month, though.

New York Times stopped charging for access to its website in September because of concerns about growth in its subscriber base. The My Times page seems to be their attempt to make the free site stickier so users will make it their homepage driving advertising revenue. Certainly, New York Times is a company that knows how to make the ad model work.

Mpayyment Widget

Mpayy is planning on falling in line after launch with an Mpayyment widget that will allow folks to take payments from any site - facebook, myspace, igoogle, maybe even the New York Times. We are wondering about what services it should offer. Comments and thoughts on this matter are invited. Certainly, it will allow payment, but we wonder about enabling Activity and Payment Details on it. Please write back if you have thoughts.