Personalized homepage for NYT.com

Posted by Marion Geiger on April 17, 2009 at 4:19 PM

NYT.com joins the personalized news trend with their recently launched "widget". It's called "My Headlines" and allows readers to have personalized news feeds on their NYT homepage by selecting the sections and features they want displayed on more than 12,000 topics. They can even create their own personalized headlines for reference. The widget is also available for personal websites and blogs, allowing readers to have a list of their favorite NYT topics on their own webpages.

Personalizing news has become increasingly popular with the internet as readers can chose what news they want, and is even considered a necessity for the news industry. BBC has also created personalization availabilities on their homepage, following your location, color preferences and news preferences. There are even websites entirely dedicated to the idea of customized news like NewscastMix and Netvibes.

Now, print publications are trying to cater to individual tastes like Time Inc's experiment with their customizable magazine "Mine" in which people can chose different magazine titles to go into one personal publication. This week was the first attempt, yet many subscribers did not receive what they ordered, according to the Associated Press. However, it is an example of the Internet's impact on print, giving readers what they want to read

Source: NYT.com, BBC, AP