We reported on this back in May and as of this week the New York Times social networking experiment TimesPeople is now up and running in its Beta version. According to its homepage it's

A new way to discover what other readers find interesting on our site — and to make recommendations of your own...you can share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, comments on articles, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels.

Truthfully, this sounds like a bit of a recipe for disaster, in so far as attaching people's personal lives to a name brand like the Times — are they hiring a whole new staff to police this venture? Oversharing can be tricky! That said, we're big supporters of the Times new media ventures so we're willing to give it a whirl. Stay tuned.