The internet is growing up. Please welcome NYTimes to Social Media and the Social Internet

Consider this (courtesy of Wikipedia):

• September 18, 1851 – The New York Times was founded (although originally named New-York Daily Times).Newspaper.
• 1995 – The Times has a strong web presence and is ranked one of the top sites. The content is generated by the Times staff.
• March, 2005 – The New York Times Website has 555 Million page views. Content is still generated by Times staff.
• 2008 – The domain nytimes.com attracts at least 146 million visitors annually according to a Compete.com study. The Times website ranks 59th by number of unique visitors, with over 14 million unique visitors in August 2008. 
• June, 2008 – New York Times launches a Beta version of TimesPeople allowing users to connect, share, comment, and review items and content within the NYT site. A social network within the content driven site.

From TimesPeople:

“TimesPeople is a new way to discover what other readers find interesting on NYTimes.com — and to make recommendations of your own. With TimesPeople, you can share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, reader comments, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels.”

When we say “social media”, we should really be saying the “social internet”. The internet as a whole is beginning to harness the power of profiles, user generated content, and the social graph. Websites that have traditionally been known for publishing content, are now realizing the importance of social interactions and engagement.

The consumers are the content creators. The creators are the consumers. And now, organizations that have built hugely successful businesses with content creation as its core competency, are adapting to the ever increasing demand for social interactions and collective, community based content creation/sharing.

In The Power of Profiles post by Fred Wilson:

While I am sure the people who work at the New York Times think of themselves as a content company first and foremost, what goes on at the New York TImes website is as much about software as it is about content. And slowly but surely the Times online is becoming social software. That’s a big deal.

The internet is growing up. We are all adopting and evolving with the changing times. Please welcome The New York Times to Social Media and the Social Internet.

NOTE: This article can also be found @ LotameLearnings