The New York Times launched Beta620 yesterday, its public testing ground for new and upcoming features for the NYTimes.com website, almost a year after it was originally expected.
Named after the home of the Times (620 Eighth Avenue in New York), the site—found at beta620.nytimes.com—launched with seven different projects to be beta-tested, including “The Buzz,” which tracks social media commentary for Times stories, and a crossword app.
SVP and Chief Advertising Officer at the NYT Media Group Denise Warren called the site “a place that gives a permanent home to the tradition of innovation and… invites our community in to help us formulate an opinion about the innovation and the new products.”
The site was originally thought to be launching last summer. Explaining the delay, Warren said that “a little thing called the digital subscription model that obviously wasn’t so little and really took a lot of energy and resources” was mainly responsible for the delay. If only they could have tried to beta test that first to see how it would impact other projects.
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Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.