Having been in startups for 5 years, and with lots of friends running small, disruptive tech businesses, I tend to find most interesting media developments to come from these companies. So I was very impressed when I was browsing the NYT today and saw on the sidebar a list of articles that had been chosen for me. The widget had recognised that I was logged in to LinkedIn (via cookie) and had recognized my industry vertical and chosen news stories based on it. Now I know its not a technically difficult integration (we’ve done a much more involved integration for music news, and are doing so for other partners in other verticals currently), nor a new concept, but it is a great step forward for a major news outlet.

This is a great move by the NYT which underlines the power of moving away from requiring explicit inputs to generate personalized content. The NYT now (in a small way) demonstrates an awareness of ambient personal taste data. Which is something we have been preaching for a while.

After noticing this on the NYT, I checked ReadWriteWeb and realised that the ever astute Marshall Kirkpatrick had already written up the announcement last week…

If you are a publisher and are interested in how this concept can be taken further, do drop me an email and I’d be happy to chat.