The New York Times is the latest media company to partner with IFTTT, the startup whose service connects up websites and social networks. Users of the service can now set six “triggers” relating to content on the news site.

They include: when a new article is published in a certain section or matching a specific search query; when an article or blog post becomes popular; when a new Critics Pick film is reviewed; when a new book is added to the NYT’s Best Sellers List; and when a new event is listed in a particular category.

IFTTT’s community is already using these triggers, with example “recipes” highlighted on the service including the ability to automatically post new theatre events into Google Calendar; share popular Business section articles on LinkedIn; and receive an email when a NYT Technology article becomes popular.

The New York Times follows in the footsteps of ESPN, which teamed up with IFTTT last year for an Olympic Games partnership, where users could set triggers to receive alerts when certain events happened during the London games.

ESPN now has six triggers of its own available for IFTTT users who wish to create recipes based on published stories, matches starting and final scores pushed from ESPN’s website.

BuzzFeed and YouTube are other media-related channels available through IFTTT, which now has more than 60 such partners. The company’s aim is to help people connect up their favourite sites and services without requiring coding knowledge or familiarity with these sites’ developer APIs.

Media is one of IFTTT’s key areas for growth. “For someone like The Guardian or the New York Times, what they’re really looking to do is get their media out there, read and consumed – or at least clicked back to,” chief executive Linden Tibbetts told The Guardian in July.

“IFTTT gives people very powerful filter tool about how they want to consume that. It could be articles by a specific author, or which mention a specific topic or category. Think of it as a way to follow that content with any service, whether it’s Pocket, Instapaper, email or SMS. Media is a really interesting space for us.”

IFTTT launched in 2010, raised $7m of funding in early 2012, and recently launched its first mobile app for iPhone.