The New York Times today launched a pseudo-social network to increase the interactivity and reader retention of NYTimes.com. TimesPeople will allow NYT readers to "assemble a network of Times readers" to send and receive article recommendations. They'll also be notified whenever you make a comment on a story or review a restaurant or movie.

In the TimesPeople FAQ, the Times says the system is a "great way to discover things on NYTimes.com that you might not otherwise have found and to share your discoveries with other NYTimes.com readers." It sounds vaguely like an internal New York Times version of Digg to me.

The site also has a "News Feed" which encompasses all of the data from your friends on the site. (Methinks Facebook should have tried to trademark that phrase). There is also a TimesPeople Facebook Application that allows you to share your NYTimes.com activity there as well. The site also reports there is an API currently in development.

The New York Times has been very aggressive with using blogs and comments to increase interactivity on the site. This is a natural extension of that and should get a fair amount of use from NYT regulars. On the other hand, it probably won't get much traction with drive-by readers -- though there really isn't much of a downside to it.

We'll see if the NYTimes.com's monthly pageviews per unique visitor rise in the next few months as TimesPeople use becomes more widespread.

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