'NY Times' Hits Up Twitter Crowd for Fresh Ideas

I just came from The New York Times building, where I took in part of Times Open, "a day-long event for developers interested in working with NYTimes.com as a news and information platform." Apparently there are a lot of those people. I had to sit on the floor because every seat was taken by a 30-ish guy in jeans with a Mac laptop. Most of them seemed to be Twittering the conference as they went, and following each other's Twitter feeds. Surreal moment: At one point, the guy sitting closest to me was reading a blog post containing a photo of the guy sitting immediately behind him.

Open source guru Tim O'Reilly gave the keynote presentation. He talked a lot about Twitter, which he touted as the most successful social-networking platform, and also offered a few ideas for the Times to adopt, including:

-Software that keeps track of what a reader has already seen in order to ensure that one only sees the freshest content. (Google's Jonathan Rosenberg suggested much the same thing earlier this week.) O'Reilly called this "a Project Houdini equivalent for newspapers," a reference to the Obama campaign's innovative program to keep its call lists current by purging those who'd already voted.

-Opening up Times People, the site's social-networking component, so that it can "interoperate" with Facebook and Twitter.

-Finding ways to single out for recognition those readers who most frequently comment on or email stories. O'Reilly: "New York Times you've done a great job of learning what your users pay attention to, but you're not reflecting it back to them in increased status."