Chris Webb

The New York Times dips its toe into the Facebook waters today with the release of its New York Times News Quiz application.”Sigh, another Facebook application.” you say? Perhaps, but this one is particularly interesting to me for a few reasons:

1. It is one of only a very few from traditional print publishers
2. It is not just a branding play
3. They have built in some interesting sticky features
4. Good tie-in’s to their content

I believe items 3 and 4 are the most important for content providers. The Quiz is offered every weekday morning and the scoring system is probably motivational enough to keep many coming back for more.

In addition, they offer ample opportunities to click through to the content related to the quiz, and I thought the “study links” for the next day’s quiz feature was especially clever.

The scoring seems a bit off to me, but that’s likely because it was my first test on the first day. My particular ranking of 68% among Facebook users is strange as I got 100% on the first test. See how competitive I am already?

It is important to remember that we are in the very early days of Facebook apps. I am sure we will see many more from content providers as the platform matures and as companies figure out exactly what they want to accomplish with these applications. Still, it’s exciting to see traditional publishers playing here.

(Thanks Read/Write Web)