Monday, the New York Times launched TimesPeople—a social networking add-on to its website the publication hopes will evolve the media giant into a more robust community of readers in a web-obsessed world.  Obviously a response to the increasing takeover of micromedia channels and alternative media sources, TimesPeople is NYT’s declaration that they’ve joined the party.  But having seen the new feature set in action—perched pleasantly atop nytimes.com—I have to ask: is this just 2.0 lipstick on a 1.0 pig?

Aside from some annoying user experience problems (cumbersome popups disrupt everything you try to read), TimesPeople appears to be a competent step in the right direction for the broadsheet.  Users create profiles and build networks by adding friends. While browsing the site users can then recommend stories which get fed into their social network via the embedded toolbar, creating a community of exchange and interconnectedness not unlike some of the Times’s newfangled competition. Currently in Beta version, TimesPeople seems a promising, if not desperate attempt to keep the paper relevant. Will it work? I think the answer for now is we’ll see.