Those of you who get your New York Times online — and 99.99% of the time that includes us — may have noticed something different when you clicked on the homepage this morning. At first we thought it was just an extra level of advertising (turns out that was the WSJ!) but lo and behold the Times had decided to launch their Times Extra feature. Times Extra, once you click on the button (and you have to do it every 24 hrs apparently or it switches back) provides an "alternative view" of the home page and features news headlines with links from third-party sources.

So! What happens when the Times decides to link to you (they are apparently using a a news aggregator system called Blogrunner they acquired back in 2005)? Could it be the new Drudge (or HuffPo) of traffic providers? Earlier this morning we happened to notice that one of the external links provided below the home page story about all the money Rahm Emmanuel was for a Clusterstock piece written by our friend John Carney. Carney assured us he would look into his numbers and let us know whether it was a measurable boon.