Times Guide to Entertainment Opens on the Internet Today
Entering a market crowded with some of the biggest companies in cyberspace, The New York Times Company said yesterday that it would introduce an Internet service about entertainment, restaurants and shopping in New York City and its suburbs. The site, called New York Today, will be available, starting today, at nytoday.com.
The service will compete with New York Sidewalk from Microsoft, Digital Cities New York from America Online and Citysearch New York from Citysearch, a privately held company. All the companies are seeking a share of the rich market for local advertising, which includes classified advertising, yellow pages listings, outdoor, broadcast and print ads.
"Local advertising is the biggest and most profitable market for advertising," said Brian C. Oakes, an analyst with Lehman Brothers who follows newspapers and Internet companies. "It is critically important for newspapers to win the local market, both in print and on line."
Newspapers may have an edge over technology companies because of their history and reputation in the cities they serve, analysts said. "One of the problems for all these local arts and entertainment sites is that they all look the same," said Patrick Keane, an analyst with Jupiter Communications, a New York research firm. "The Times has an established brand, while the others have to build theirs from scratch."
Daniel J. Donaghy, the general manager of New York Today, said that he hoped that the breadth of the news and reviews about New York events written for The New York Times would distinguish the site from the competition. But Donaghy said the company expected that the most important advantage would be technology that allowed each user to customize the service to see both information and advertising related to the user's own interests.
The site is designed to look like an appointment calendar, with weather forecasts, arts events and other information listed by date.
In one unusual feature, advertisers can have their sales and other promotional events mixed in with the arts and entertainment listings. Users can see a list of these sales and, if they choose, have sales for categories of their choice displayed when they first enter the site.
In addition to the calendar listings, New York Today has a number of other close links between advertising and the site's editorial content.
For example, a user who searches the classified advertising listings of The Times for, say, condominiums in Greenwich Village will also see advertisements offering listings of the same type of property from several real estate brokers.
That advertising will be marked as such and displayed in red type, while editorial content will be in blue type.
Martin A. Nisenholtz, the president of The New York Times Electronic Media Company, said that such links were a service to users in the long tradition of publishing. "People often buy the newspaper as much to read the ads as to read the news," he said.
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