With Firefox browser plugin TimesPeople, the venerable gray lady will now allow registered users to connect, adding "friends" and recommending articles to each other. You can follow recommendations through a drop-down menu that presents a feed of recommended articles from other users, or subscribe via RSS. It's not a social network, strictly, but a social layer. And while I poke fun at the times in the headline, there's certainly one way this could be used to drive revenue — by targetting ads based on a reader, and a reader's contacts, interests as determined both by the user's demographic information from their registration and the topics they browse. And unlike Facebook, advertisers don't have to worry about advertising against content they might deem unacceptable. Unless the Times starts doing photo essays of keg stands and college-age women experimenting with homosexuality.

Contact information for this author is not available.