APIs: The New Distribution

Not to belabor the point, but Jeff Jarvis hits the nail on the head with his APIs: The New Distribution post from March 2009 in commenting on The Guardian’s announcement of its Open Data strategy.

glenn

More on News Media Open API Strategies – New York Times

I previously blogged about The Guardian’s Open API strategy. Today, let’s have a look at the New York Times.

New York Times Open API Strategy

Early in 2009, the New York Times launched its Article Search API.

While this is a somewhat innovative strategy for a News organization, it’s a classic Web 2.0 strategy, pioneered by the likes of Amazon and Google. This is an inevitable outgrowth of the emergence of the Web as a Platform, and the Open Business Models and Value Chains that it enables. It’s going to force traditional News Media companies to make some tough discussions, as The Guardian’s Martin Belam points out in his post MPs expenses, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ models of 21st century journalism.

So in a nutshell, the New York Times and The Guardian are making their data open to the public to build Mashup applications. In the case of the New York Times Article Search API, here’s one example, where someone took the raw article data, and created a visualization of the most popular topics for NY Times articles from 1985 to 2001. This may seem like a rather cheesy example, but the possibilities are profound, as suggested by the post above by The Guardian’s Martin Belam.

In Summary

Nothing too profound here. Just wanted to point out that the New York Times is also incorporating Open Data into its business strategy. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

glenn

The Guardian’s Open API strategy

The Guardian, IMO, has a very forward-looking strategy around Open Data. Please see my previous related post on this topic.

This post is going to explore some of the core underpinnings of the Guardian’s Open Data strategy.

The Guardian’s Open Platform Strategy

In March of this year The Guardian officially launched its Open Platform strategy. It’s a very forward-looking strategy IMO, and has been generally applauded.

Here’s a link explaining what the Guardian’s Open Platform is all about. Effectively, it opens up the Guardian’s content “to the world”, and to developers, as a platform upon which to develop appliactions and services … in an application style this is called a “mashup” application.

The Content API and the Data Store

There are two key components to The Guardian’s Open Platform: (i) the Content API, and (ii) the Data Store.

The Content API is a mechanism for progamatically accessing Guardian content. You can query the Guardian’s content database for articles and get them back in formats that are geared toward integration with other internet applications.

The Data Store is a VERY cool product. It is a collection of important and high quality data sets curated by Guardian journalists. You can find useful data here, download it, and integrate it with other internet applications.

The Data Store and Database-driven Journalism

The Guardian’s Data Store is a brilliant enabler of database-driven journalism. Adrian Holovaty of Everyblock is probably the leading proponent of this movement, and I’m sure he’d be a big fan of The Guardian’s Data Store.

For a wonderful example of the power of The Guardian’s Data Store, and the mashup-friendly services that the product enables, check out this wonderful blog post by The Guardian’s Martin Belam describing the Data Store’s role in a scandal that arose in Great Britain this summer around MP expenses, and his discussion of the contrasting “open” and “closed” models of 21st-century journalism. It’s a great read.

All for now.

glenn