On The Front Page of the New York Times

 

Fractals of Change made the front page of the New York Times online edition, thanks to a robot of course.

The Times has a new feature called Times Extra which inserts hyperlinks to blogs which relate to front page stories in a scrollable box under the story as you can see above. I posted my criticism of Treasury for pre-announcing a plan for a subsidized interest rate cut and thus keeping the housing market in freefall until the cut materializes. The robot, which is part of a Times-owned service called blogrunner, recognized the relationship to the Times story (and was kind enough to disregard the fact that my post keyed off a Wall Street Journal article about the preannouncement).

Although, as a New Yorker, I was brought up to believe that being above the fold of the NYTimes is the road to fame and fortune, the extra traffic from this link is so far negligible – far less than when Techmeme picks up a post. This may be because Times Extra was just introduced yesterday and/or because you have to click the "Try Our Extra Home Page" button in the masthead below to get into Times Extra mode. Most visitors to the front page aren't in the habit of doing this.

 

But it's nice to be part of the conversation.