The NY Times gets Dugg into Social Media

Last week I posted on the fact that Dow Jones' MarketWatch has added "Digg It" and "Del.icio.us" link functionality to their news articles.  In a Techcrunch post this morning, the latest buzz is that mainstream news giant, the NY Times is also getting into social media integration with the availability of Digg It, Facebook and Newsvine links, as well as a "permalink" option for simply identifying the web address (no offense to the NY Times readership, but how many NY Times readers actually knew what a permalink was before this addition?) 

 

The big news here is that the NY Times has traditionally been a subscriber based news source.  While the information is really free to read anyways, the paper has gradually transitioned away from its original stance of user login for article access.  As sites like the NY Times and MarketWatch utilize social media sites like Digg and Facebook to (potentially) access larger audiences, is there awareness in appropriate ways to utilize this new type of information source online, or will it cause a dilution of quality and collaboration integrity that these sites were to be built on.