The notion of the New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) filing for tech patents — one in process, several others en route — might sound like it comes from left field but Michael Zimbalist sees it as a sign of the Times’ transformation from a media company to a technology services provider. Zimbalist joined the company in late 2005 as VP-R&D operations to head the new “futurist unit” designed to help direct and shape that evolution. We recently discussed the unit’s mission to look forward roughly 18- to-36 months for ways technology can be used to meet the needs of readers and advertisers including search technology, even mobile barcodes. (The mobile plans are detailed at our sister site mocoNews.net.) More after the jump…
Patents Pending: In addition to handling R&D in general, Zimbalist is also responsible for overseeing all of the NYTCO’s Boston Globe site, Boston.com. As a result of Zimbalist’s dual role, the R&D group developed, and then filed a patent, for a local search tool. Boston.com has aggregated a collection of more than 4,000 area-related websites chosen by the Boston Globe editorial staff. The problem that needed solving: how to search for those sites without using the Google page-ranking system, as the company decided that a more human perspective was needed in order to ensure that the correct content comes up.
Zimbalist: “It’s often difficult to distinguish between content elements and navigation elements that appear on the page. So the patent is for a method of filtering out elements on the page that are not related to content. For example, if someone searched for ‘copyright,’ almost every page has a copyright notice at the bottom of a page. It’s not a part of the content, and this tool filters it out. And that came out of a search specialist that we hired in R&D, [as we began] recognizing that search was going to be increasingly important to the media landscape.”
The Vision: Determining what kinds of new products and technologies the R&D unit can develop begins with how the Times as a whole is evolving. Zimbalist: “Along with every other traditional media company, the Times has experienced this explosion in our competitive set. Long ago, we just competed against other newspapers in New York. And then we began to compete outside New York. Then we began to compete with all news organizations over the web. And now, we’re competing against companies that don’t even create original content, but aggregate it, from small start-ups to the biggest portals. So we aren’t restricted to saying, ‘What sort of content-based applications should we do?’ because services and content are merging very directly… There’s no question that our competencies must move much more further into technology, because our competitive set now includes technology services companies.”
Test, Learn, Adjust: Getting down to the process of how the R&D unit works, Zimbalist says they’ve tried to create a product development model along the lines of a technology company: “Traditionally, media companies have planned new products immaculately and for long, long periods of time before launching them and largely leaving them be. Technology companies have very short release cycles and then it’s version and version and version. They follow the model of test, learn and adjust… And that’s part of our evolution.”
The recording of our conversation is here. (MP3, 11.5 MB)
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