Opportunity knocks

Last week The New York Times launched Times Extra in beta.

The latter aggregates news headlines from other publications — including blogs — and attaches them to relevant articles on The New York Times homepage.

"The days when content sites were afraid to link to other sites are over," proclaimed CTO-digital operations Marc Frons, referring to old content publisher fears that linking to third-party sites would contribute to "leakage" — when users on a given site leave after clicking on an outside link.

A "Times Extra" button at the top of the homepage enables users to see the Times Extra-optimized site. Pages are ad-supported.

At ad:tech New York last month, a New York Times representative stated the publication is prioritizing new media resources to improve its news offering — including social media features and streaming video.

Illustrating this claim, the Times recently ran an interactive Facebook campaign to build Facebook "Fan" figures and improve brand equity with users that consume news media online (as opposed to in print). The campaign was considered a success.