• by Sara Guaglione , July 1, 2019

The New York Times is testing a new hub for personalized content in its iOS app.

Some users will see the new feature in the latest update of the app. A navigation bar at the bottom of the app now has three parts: “Top Stories,” “For You” and “Sections.”

“For You” “is the most prominent surfacing of active personalization in the experience,” Matt Ericson, a Times assistant managing editor who worked on this project, told Nieman Lab, which first reported the news.

The hub does not rely too much on reading behavior, but on topics a registered user chooses to follow in Settings or in previous iterations of the app.

Topics range from “climate change” to particularly well-known Times columnists.

The goal for the hub is increased engagement and retention, which often leads to the conversion of readers to paying subscribers.

Readers get the content they are interested in displayed "front and center" in the app, making it easier to find, Mollie Vandor, a Times product director, told Nieman Lab.

Last year, the Times experimented with a “Your Feed” hub in the iOS app. Ussers could select topics, sections and columnists to follow to create a personalized newsfeed of tailored content.