Newspaper as a Platform: Guardian Launches API
The Guardian just launched a new API which will allow third-party developers to access and reuse the Guardian's content database in their own applications. The new API is part of the Guardian's new Open Platform, which, as of today, consists of the API and a Data Store, but the Guardian also announced that it plans to offer more services in the near future. The Data Store is a collection of high quality data sets which are curated by the Guardian and hosted on Google Docs.
This move by the Guardian comes just about a month after the New York Times opened up its Article Search API, which also gives developers access to a complete set of the paper's content (Disclosure: RWW is a syndication partner of the NYT). The New York Times, however, provides access to a more varied set of data and includes specialized APIs for accessing its movie reviews, breaking news, or information about the U.S. Congress. Other news organizations like the BBC or NPR also offer similar APIs.
Data Store Uses Google Docs
The Data Store and its accompanying blog are more directly aimed at consumers. The Data Store houses a collection of all of the statistics that the newspaper has published. Unlike the New York Times, however, the Guardian does not yet provide an equivalent to the Data Visualization Lab. Interestingly, the Guardian chose Google Docs as its repository for this data. Here, for example, is the Guardian's spreadsheet with the U.S. public debt since 2001.
Future of the Newspaper?
We have already seen a number of very interesting uses of the NYT APIs, and we will surely see a lot of interesting and useful applications that will now make use of the Guardian's data. What is more interesting, however, is that some newspaper are clearly beginning to understand where the future of their business lies (the Guardian now also exposes full-text RSS for all of its sections). If anything, this feels like a far smarter way to go than the MediaNews Group's misguided attempt to put proprietary printers into readers' living rooms.
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Great step forward!
The Guardian API is really a breeze to work with. No nonsense, they simply deliver the content and let you work with it.
We quickly created a short demo of what's possible http://labs.zemanta.com/guardian/ (we're one of the demo partners).
Now if only Guardian (and others) recognized how important it is to use Linking Open Data identifiers so we can tie in different data providers into the same mash-up.
Bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
This is awesome. Behind the news of the newspapers collapsing, I am glad to finally see some solid innovation into their future relevance. With both sides of the Atlantic media world now experimenting with API's, we should be certain to see more of this in the future.
I've been a regular user of the Guardian's site for years - they were one of the first UK papers to have a significant online presence, yet only yesterday did I notice that they had RSS feeds for pretty much every recurring sub-section of the paper.
Ironically, I noticed this when searching for an old article I'd read in the print edition, yet with the newly setup feeds, I may not bother buying the Friday edition at all - especially as NetNewsWire on iPod has really started to replace a paper/magazine on commuter journeys.
The question, of course, is how long this can last - i.e. if I switch from being a regular purchaser of the Friday and Saturday paper editions to RSS feeds, I've moved from revenue to cost, and I just can't see an RSS based model that generates enough revenue to fund professional journalism.
As a user - well, it's a bit like worrying when a good restaurant has no customers.
google docs?
We've updated the Software Platform to show photo, video, and Twitter chat about this new platform. Click the name to access.
It will be interesting to see some mashups at BarCampLondon 6 at the end of the month (more tickets up for grabs tomorrow).
You have to admit the writer does ring some valid points@!
RT
www.privacy.at.tc
Such a great move for the Guardian. Can't wait to see the apps that are built off this.
@jowyang has a good post with some possible use-cases at http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/03/10/dream-how-the-guardians-api-could-let-a-thousand-stories-bloom/
Our thoughts are at http://platform.idiomag.com/2009/03/the-guardian-launches-content-api/
You have to admit the writer does ring some valid points@!!
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