The New York Times has been busy lately, with the launch of a whole raft of experimental services, looking to re-invigorate the stagnating newspaper business as a social media platform.

Though yesterday saw the launch of an interesting social networking API, perhaps more interesting for Ensembli was the Friday’s rollout of the experimental Article Skimmer. The Skimmer is an alternative means of navigating the NYT’s news content, purportedly mirroring the notion of spreading out the pages of a Sunday newspaper and enabling readers to quickly ’skim’ through a large pool of stories.

The ‘glance-able’ design is pleasantly reminiscent of Ensembli’s own service, with a couple key differences - Ensembli’s not limited to the content of a single publication, but the web in its entirety, and we’re not simply presenting an aggregation, but seeking to find the most relevant items for each user.

Interestingly, Acrylic’s Times application, for OSX, provides a similar ‘newspaper’ feel, but enables users to aggregate RSS content, but it’s unclear if Skimmer or Times seeks to understand relevancy and how a user is consuming content over time. What we’re seeking to do with our relevancy engine is surface insights into a user’s behaviour in order to maximise relevancy…however, relevance is an intensely personal thing and it’s a complex problem to solve!

Regardless, Skimmer as a precedent is a great development, indicating that publishers are seeking to find new means to reach readers. Perhaps companies like Ensembli could be valuable technology partners for the likes of the NYT. At the other end of the scale, blogs may soon be providing print media’s content base!

Read more at Recreate the Sunday Morning Paper in Your Browser and Can ‘The Printed Blog’ Succeed with Blogs in Newspaper Form?