Guardian Announces The Future Of News Brands
March 10th, 2009 by Mark Hanson
Exciting news from the Guardian where they’ve announced they will make their content available on an Open Platform. Great, but what does this mean??!
Essentially the Guardian are saying they see the future for news brands as content providers, making themselves useful to readers on the web by allowing other content providers eg online niche news sites, bloggers, forums to repackage Guardian content by making their code widely available.
But wouldn’t the Guardian lose out by losing control? I don’t think so. The best place to come for Guardian content in one place will be the Guardian’s site and its articles will still rank very highly in search – much more than most other sites. But where users have a close relationship with a particular blog or forum then it makes sense for Guardian content to appear there, with the potential for online publishers to innovate with that content to produce something even more tailored.
The Guardian are ensuring they have a place in audience’s networks in a way that keeps pace with their viewing preferences.
UPDATE – Jeremiah has a great post on what innovation may result from the Guardian extending control beyond the walls of their site.
All details are here and a summary of what is planned is below:
The Open Platform is the suite of services that make it possible for our partners to build applications with the Guardian. We’ve opened up our platform so that everyone can benefit from our journalism, our brand, and the technologies that power guardian.co.uk.
The Open Platform currently includes two products, the Content API and the Data Store:
1. The Content API is a mechanism for getting Guardian content. You can query our content database for articles and get them back in formats that are geared toward integration with other internet applications.
The Content API is a free service. We have some limits and restrictions detailed in our terms and conditions, but we hope that you will use our service for whatever needs you have, including commercial applications.
2. The Data Store 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 has a range of different uses for different types of partners. We will include relevant terms and conditions along with each service.
Our aim is to make the Guardian Open Platform a useful environment for anyone who creates for the internet. We will offer more services in the future such as an ad network and an application platform.
This initial release is a beta trial that will help us identify the ways our partners want to work with us. Access will be granted on a limited basis.
If you want to use the Content API, read the Getting started guide and apply for a key.
Stephen Newton Says:
But how will it make money?
There’s been a lot of chatter around moving towards paid content as relying on advertising alone simply isn’t working.
The diagram you show here looks pretty enough and has lots of important key words on it, but doesn’t actually show how anything relates to, or interacts with, anything else.
Mark Hanson Says:
Hi Stephen – the revenue model has been discussed as:
a) people who use Guardian content for free having to sign up to Guardian’s ad network, although I’m not sure that’s confirmed
b) a plethora of Guardian branded content all round the web strengthens their core offering and makes it more valuable – I guess they’re hoping to hook in more readers for their site through this long tail
It’s all experimentation and I guess the fact they’re owned by a charitable trust and not a FTSE conglomerate makes experimentation easier:)
Stephen Newton Says:
The Guardian ad network is an interesting development, but I’m still not convinced it will bring in enough cash. The long tail might support the odd blogger, but GMG needs real money.
The Scott Trust’s resources are far from limitless. The last published accounts reveal that, together with the Observer, the Guardian loses £14m each year. That means the profitable (£22.7m, pre-tax) regional division suffers budget cuts.
With ad revenues under pressure, there doesn’t appear to be much room for manoeuvre.
renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll - Links of the day Says:
[...] Guardian Announces The Future Of News Brands » pr-media-blog.co.uk [...]
Mark Hanson Says:
Stephen – good point bearing in mind today’s large job cuts announced across the Manchester Evening News network (owned by GMG).
Mixed fortunes for the old and new in the GMG group.
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