The name pretty much says it all: News + Me.It's a personalized news network created by tech incubator Betaworks and The New York Times Company, it's going live by the end of 2010 as an iPad app... and that's about all we know. 

A mysterious honeycomb placeholder that appeared last week on news.me was the first visible sign of progress. But Betaworks CEO John Borthwick said that the project has been in the works for six months. 

Research and development employees at the Times Co. hinted that the app is forward-thinking and developed to cater to the direction they think news consumption is heading, but beyond that, not much is known.

The Times isn't the first to try a social news service. Google released a personalized news option at the end of 2009, and the Los Angeles Times offers NewsMatch, which identifies news preferences based on a small visual quiz. 

But the combined force of Betaworks's resume, which includes TweetDeck and bit.ly (which has more than 30 billion clicked links this year alone) and the Times Co. could make this development a substantial one, rather than an app that's late to the party.

The Times Co. also has taken an equity stake in bit.ly. That's the second time in a year they've gotten financially involved in the company. In March, the Times Co. was part of a group, including AOL and Intel, that gave $20 million to the start-up.

Reach reporter Laura J. Nelson here.

Sign up for Neon Tommy's weekly e-mail newsletter.