US: New York Times forays into user-generated content

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on February 23, 2007 at 10:23 AM

The New York Times is planning to publish user-generated content for the first time on its website. The feature, ‘How We Met’ asks couples to recreate their first encounter in a short video segment. While ‘How We Met’ is a playful tool, it will really serve as Times’ first experiment with user content.

“It’s our first foray into user-generated conten,” said Nicholas Ascheim, Director of Entertainment, Video & Audio Products at The New York Times.

There will be little editorial guidelines. Users are free to submit footage of their choice – of their wedding if they want. The only two main editorial criteria will be length – short – and propriety.

“It s a great way for us to build our content library,” said Ascheim.

‘How We Met’ remains an experiment, in view of expanding user-generated content to the news sections. “We haven t quite figured how to do that on the news side yet,” said Ascheim.

“It’s something we want to do further down the road in other areas.”

Source: Beet.tv