Speaking at the Wharton School of Business' "Future of Publishing" conference on Friday afternoon, Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president of digital operations at the New York Times, offered remarks on the future of engagement in the wake of Facebook's new web-sharing tools.

Nisenholtz emphasized engagement as an aspect of a publication's online offering for which readers might be willing to pay for access to that online content.

"The more engaged our users are with us, the more value we deliver to them, the more likely they will be to pay," he said.

He offers a number of ways to engage readers, noting that posts with slide shows and video result in longer visits to the site and more pageviews, and that those readers who offer reviews for the site use it more frequently than those who do not. Nisenholtz also said that 60 percent of visitors to the NYT website go directly to the homepage, and that they are trying to recreate this success with a revamped Business homepage.

But the changes to Facebook offer newspapers the ability to take better advantage of what Nisenholtz calls "one of our most leverageable assets": the audience.

"Here, I'm referring to our audience as knowledgeable participants in the life our web site," he said. "This creates the essential emotional bond that will lead to real engagement in an interactive setting."

The readers of the New York Times can offer each other their knowledge, he goes on to explain, through an interactive question-and-answer system, which currently exists in the form of Abuzz. This rarely-mentioned software offers users the ability to ask questions of other users, somewhat like Yahoo!Answers, and perhaps Nisenholtz's remarks on the software mean it will soon play a higher-profile part in the social networking aspects of the NYT's site.

How will Facebook's changes help software like Abuzz work better? They will create "aggregated identity," the phrase coined by media analysts to describe an identity that is consistent across the web.

"At the heart of this kind of knowledge sharing is identity.," he says of Abuzz. "I don't just mean real names, although that helps. I mean a track record based on a lot of input."

In addition to sharing knowledge, the New York Times must "transition from being on the web to being of the web," Nisenholtz says.

This involves a greater emphasis on fluidity of information, and Nisenholtz looks forward to a time where the "boundaries of (NYTimes.com) become liquid, fluid, shared"--a place for people to gain and impart knowledge, where readers become contributors.

He mentions the importance of "game-like" projects like Twitter and states that the NYT must integrate these new "fun, whimsical interfaces" into its website to create a deeper emotional connection with its readers. This emotional connection, he claims, is an important aspect of the future of the newspaper.

"We have an opportunity to redefine the essential relationship that we have with our users--and change the contract we have with them--from one that is loose, free and casual, to one of real emotional commitment," he said.

"Engagement."

Sources: CNET, paidContent