On the last day of the Seattle Post Intelligence newspaper, it is comforting to see a news organization embracing an open strategy. The New York Times has been releasing bits of its application programming interface (API) recently, and recently held a workshop day for developers. This is a great resource and an interesting example for other organizations. In the long run this may not save the NYT, but it certainly beats trying to hold back the rising tide. And if the New York Times start showing up in little bits on sites all over the web, their brand will benefit. I am not quite sure how they make money, but Google has shown that free is a business strategy — and a pretty successful one at that.
This will be an interesting case to watch — not just for news lovers, but for any organization that creates content and/or has extensive content archives. The strategy of trying to control access to content, and force viewers through your own site just doesn’t work. This ’scarcity’ strategy doens’t protect, it just drives customers to seek easier alternatives. Make it free, make it easy to reuse, and get many pieces of your brand scattered all over the web. That’s the Google way, and may be the only way to survive in the rapidly changing information world we inhabit.
Our APIs (application programming interfaces) allow you to programmatically access New York Times data for use in your own applications. Our goal is to facilitate a wide range of uses, from custom link lists to complex visualizations. Why just read the news when you can hack it?
Times Open: Developers Gather to Discuss The New York Times APIs – ReadWriteWeb
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we’re big fans of the Times Open strategy, the program that focuses on making the data of The New York Times more accessible to the developer community. We heralded the launch of the program, covered the first available API, and marveled at the access to content the APIs have begun to provide.
YDN Theater: NYTimes Open with Derek Gottfrid
We sat down with Derek Gottfrid, Senior Software Architect to talk about their first Times Open event today and also learn a little about what the NYTimes is doing in the developer community:
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