Interested in the big trends that drive & shape the mobile sphere? Please take a few minutes to read this great presentation by Kyle Cameron. He knows what he’s talking about.
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_Image by Peter Bihr, Creative Commons (by-nc-sa)_
Mozilla Festival (aka #Mozfest) is over, and it was intense. Throw a mix of 500 journalists, hackers, web devs and activists in a room and shake it up, and interesting things are going to happen. As well they did.
There’s plenty of good reviews out there, so I’m just going to highlight a few points that stood out for me.
Education for the open web
Ben Hammersley, who among many other things advises the EU in digital matters, made a point about the importance of education: Those who decide upon the future don’t understand the present.
We have several digital gaps in education – education in all things digital, about all things digital, across all things digital. One, there’s a gap along education lines. Two, there’s a global divide. Three, there’s a gap along income (and education) of parents that prevents kids in poorer neighborhoods the same chances to participate online (which might enable them to bootstrap knowledge).
And then we have – four! – a gap between those who by belonging to the group that really gets the web and how it works and those who don’t, where politicians are mostly on the wrong side of the gap. It’s a structural divide more than anything – give it a few years and things might work out fine, but as it stands (repeat!) Those who decide upon the future don’t understand the present. And this is something we need to work on. Luckily, it’s easier to educate some smart folks than change whole strata of society. (At least in theory.)
This is where we all can come in and help out. If you find yourself talking to a politician, help them out. Take the time to explain stuff. Don’t be snobby about it. It’s politics where we can leverage power, and it’s politics where the foundation is laid for how our most important infrastructure will work (or be broken) for years.
Let’s all work on some truly relevant things.
Image by Pierros Papadeas, some rights reserved
Data Journalism Handbook
Just a brief shout out: A large group of journalists and data diggers gathered and wrote a Data Journalism Handbook. It’s not finished, but it’s an impressive draft and a great basis to extend over time. They just dug in, and built something cool over the weekend, then took it from there. This is the way to go, really.
Popcorn – making your videos talk to the web (and the web talk back)
The real killer – a real eye opener! – for me was certainly Popcorn.js, or rather the Popcorn Maker. Popcorn.js is a framework to make video on the web more interactive – more of the web – an event framework, or in other words: a little toolkit that helps you make your videos interact with the websites around them and vice versa. For example, you can pull maps or Flickr images or a live Twitter search into your video, or into an adjacent box (or pretty much wherever you like, really).
It’s harder to explain than to understand, so here’s a Popcorn demo.
And the Popcorn Maker, launched last Friday, is a web-based authoring tool to make all this more accessibel to non-developers – you need only the most basic understanding of HTML etc to use a video you uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo and enrich it with web data.
It’s super impressive, and it’s great how this has come about since last year‘s Mozilla Festival in Barcelona.
It’s also very clearly alpha software at the time, so try at your own risk – in a first test, I wasn’t able to save a project, but could pull a Youtube video and add map data, photos and tweets within less than 5 minutes – it’s really quite something.
Standards for space, time and the web
Every morning, I went for a run. Since my hotel was close by, my run would take me around the Royal Observatory. At the Observatory there are a number of mindboggingly interesting things on display: The Prime Meridian, the original kilogram, a measurement of feet and inches (to compare with your local merchant), as well as the (probably) first clock to display Greenwich Mean Time to the public (since 1852). There’s also a red ball on one of the rooftops that every day would be pulled up slowly, then drop at exactly 13:00h every day. The ball was visible from the river Thames, allowing the ships to reset (and thus synchronize) their clocks.
The Royal Observatory was by and large the center of standardization for most of the world. From here, standards of space and time would ripple and spread throughout the Commonwealth.
It’s a bit like what the W3C is for the internet today. And like we needed to agree on standards for space and time 150 years ago, we need to agree on standards for the web today. The more open they are – the more they allow us to look inside the box, and tinker, and exchange data, and the more anybody can use and contribute to them – the better off all of us will be.
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Mozilla’s big open/free culture festival, aptly called Mozilla Festival, is on this coming weekend. I’ll be headed over to London and stay for the full festival as well as the beginning of Internet Week Europe. (Sadly I won’t be able to stick around for the full thing.)
Can’t wait for the festival that I’ve seen come together up close, so I trust it’ll be fantastic. (It’s organized by the good folks of the Mozilla Foundation, notably by the lovely Michelle Thorne & Alexandra Deschamps-Sansino, so I’m clearly biased.) Last year’s Mozilla Festival in Barcelona – called Drumbeat at the time (my blogposts) – was basically a geeky love fest, which I say with respect and admiration. This time around it’ll be great, too, and it focuses on a topic that hits even closer to home for me – it’s all about the open web and media.
As someone who for a long time wanted to (and occasionally did) work as a journalist, seeing these two cultures of journalists and geeks (or hacks & hackers in Mozfest speak) merge is great. There’s so much both can learn from each other.
Beyond purely personal interest, I’m also interested in how these spheres can learn from another. After all, I’ve been advising media companies for years, first as a freelancer then through my company Third Wave. So I love geeking out about these things and learn from some of the smartest folks in the industry (and beyond).
Long story short: If you haven’t yet, join us at the festival > sign up here; and I’ll be in London for a few days, so ping me to meet up.
Disclosure: I was on the jury for the Lovie Awards, which are part of Internet Week.
[permalink][A note to my international readers: This post has to be in German as it concerns mostly German media; the next one will be in English again. Sorry for the inconvenience.]
“Markus Schächter warnt vor Apple, Google & Co“, so die etwas verstörende Überschrift eines Interviews anlässlich der Münchner Medientage. Vorweg ein ausführliches Zitat von Herrn Schächter (Hervorhebungen von mir):
Ich hoffe, dass wir gemeinsam erkennen, was die Stunde geschlagen hat und dass jede rückwärtsgewandte Diskussion uns keinen Schritt weiter bringt. Wer einen Blick über die Grenzen wirft, der sieht, dass sich die Netzgiganten neu aufstellen. In den USA zeigen Google-TV und Apple-TV wohin die Reise geht. Suchmaschinen und Vertriebsplattformen saugen jeden Content auf, ganz egal von wem er stammt – Zeitungen, Verlage, Sender, Produzenten. Unsere Produkte werden zum Gegenstand fremder Geschäftsmodelle. Die heutigen Hersteller und Verbreiter publizistischer und kultureller Inhalte verlieren die Hoheit über ihre Produkte, wenn sie nicht sehr genau aufpassen. Ich sage es nicht zum ersten Mal: Es wird Zeit, dass wir in Deutschland endlich aufhören, die falschen Türen zu bewachen.
In diesem einen Absatz des Interviews steckt so wahnsinnig viel Verkehrtes, ich weiß kaum, wo ich anfangen soll. Also der Reihe nach, Satz für Satz.
Eines noch vorweg: Ich habe größten Respekt und vollste Hochachtung vor den öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern und habe auch immer wieder mit und für diese gearbeitet. Viele meiner Freunde, Bekannte und Kollegen arbeiten als Journalisten oder Medienberater für privatwirtschaftliche oder öffentlich-rechtliche Medienbetriebe aller Art. Meine beiden Uniabschlüsse haben den Schwerpunkt Medien und Kommunikation, meine Magisterarbeit beschäftigte sich mit dem Medienwandel und dem Einfluss von Blogs auf die politische Berichterstattung. Anders gesagt, ich kann guten Gewissens sagen, dass ich mich ein wenig mit dem deutschen Mediensystem beschäftigt habe und mich sehr dafür interessiere. Niemals würde es mir in den Sinn kommen, den öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk abzuschaffen.
Jetzt wo diese Frage aus dem Weg ist, gehen wir an die Substanz:
Markus Schächter: “Ich hoffe, dass wir gemeinsam erkennen, was die Stunde geschlagen hat und dass jede rückwärtsgewandte Diskussion uns keinen Schritt weiter bringt.”
Herr Schächter, ich stimme Ihnen voll und ganz zu. Lassen Sie uns die Zukunft diskutieren und die alten Streitreflexe zwischen öffentlich-rechtlichen und privaten Sendern sowie zwischen deutschen Medien und US-Internetunternehmen unterdrücken.
Markus Schächter: Wer einen Blick über die Grenzen wirft, der sieht, dass sich die Netzgiganten neu aufstellen. In den USA zeigen Google-TV und Apple-TV wohin die Reise geht.
Richtig, in den USA werden gerade die Spielregeln für die Zukunft des Bewegtbildes geschrieben. Besser gesagt: Dort ist das, was wir als “Zukunft des Bewegtbilds” bezeichnen würden längst Alltag: Netflix, Hulu und Co zeigen, wie einfach und gut Video-On-Demand-Dienste und Web-TV funktionieren können. Übrigens ohne dass sich dabei TV und Web in die Quere kommen würden. Hier gibt es diese Dienste nicht, nicht zuletzt da Medien und Politik in Deutschland als überraschend geschlossene Front gegenüber US-amerikanischen Onlineunternehmen auftreten. Damit schadet Deutschland gleich mehrfach – für Medien- und Internetunternehmen wird der Standort unattraktiver, Medienkonsumenten bleiben viele Spannende Kanäle unzugänglich.
Markus Schächter: Suchmaschinen und Vertriebsplattformen saugen jeden Content auf, ganz egal von wem er stammt – Zeitungen, Verlage, Sender, Produzenten.
Herr Schächter, bitte machen Sie doch Ihre Hausaufgaben. Eine Suchmaschine saugt keinen Content auf, sie indiziert ihn, macht ihn auffindbar. Was Suchmaschinen tun ist das Gegenteil dessen, was Sie hier faktenfrei behaupten: Sie stehlen diese Inhalte nicht etwa, wie Sie mit Ihrer Formulierung suggerieren, sondern sorgen dafür, dass mehr Menschen darauf aufmerksam werden. Sollte eine Zeitung, ein Verlag, ein Sender oder Produzent dies nicht wünschen, so gibt es einfachste technische Möglichkeiten, die Indizierung zu verhinden – nur sollten Sie sich bewusst sein, dass die Inhalte damit massiv an Reichweite verlieren. (Auf der Habenseite ließe sich freilich verbuchen, dass Sie Ihr Budget an SEO-Maßnahmen einsparen könnten.)
Markus Schächter: Unsere Produkte werden zum Gegenstand fremder Geschäftsmodelle.
Es ist wahr, andere Firmen verdienen daran, Ihre Inhalte zugänglich zu machen. Nur gehen diese Verdienste nicht auf Ihre Kosten, da wir hier nicht von einem Nullsummenspiel sprechen, sondern von klassischem Mehrwert im besten Sinne. Dies gilt ganz besonders für die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender, für die Sie sprechen. Im Gegensatz zu ihren privatwirtschaftlichen Kollegen lässt sich wirklich nur schwer argumentieren, dass Ihre Mission dadurch gefährdet ist, wenn Google ein paar Werbungen neben Ihren Textteasern einblendet.
Markus Schächter: Die heutigen Hersteller und Verbreiter publizistischer und kultureller Inhalte verlieren die Hoheit über ihre Produkte, wenn sie nicht sehr genau aufpassen.
Die Hersteller verlieren keineswegs die Hoheit über ihre Produkte, lediglich über ihre Verbreitung – wenn überhaupt. Ich frage mich: wo genau liegt das Problem? Kontrollverlust ist eines der Kerncharakteristika des 21. Jahrhunderts. Dies gilt es als Chance zu begreifen.
Markus Schächter: Ich sage es nicht zum ersten Mal: Es wird Zeit, dass wir in Deutschland endlich aufhören, die falschen Türen zu bewachen.
Herr Schächter, hier bin ich wieder bei Ihnen. Bitte nehmen Sie sich Ihre eigenen Worte zu Herzen und hören Sie auf, die falschen Türen zu bewachen. So intuitiv der Ruf nach mehr Kontrolle auch sein mag, er ist an dieser Stelle nicht nur sinnlos, sondern schädlich. Ein Schelm, der Ihnen unterstellen würde, die allgemeine Angst im deutschen Medienbetrieb vor den Unwägbarkeiten des Medienwandels und den US-Webunternehmen auszunutzen, um den Schulterschluss mit den privaten Sendergruppen zu suchen und somit von der Kritik an den öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern abzulenken.
Es ist ein Problem, das die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender schon lange umtreibt: “Wie können wir unseren Erfolg messen?” Allzu häufig messen sie sich mit den Maßstäben der Privatwirtschaft: Reichweite, Page Impressions, Unique Visits. Nicht uninteressant, doch basieren diese Messgrößen auf der Grundannahme, dass Werbeplätze verkauft werden müssen. Das Paradigma im öffentlichen Rundfunk ist freilich ein anderes: Bildung, Information, Gebührenakzeptanz. Diese lassen sich nicht über Reichweite messen, andere Maßstäbe müssen her. Die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender müssen sich nicht verstecken – aber sie müssen sich auch nicht schützend vor die Privatwirtschaft stellen. Google ist der Freund, nicht der Feind des öffentlichen Rundfunks.
[permalink]As of two days ago Wikileaks has released 92.000 documents about the war in Afghanistan, leaked (most likely) from within the US military. After discussing this with quite a few folks, we all agreed that this will be one of the biggest – if not the single biggest – story of 2010.
As a former media and political science major, as well as a former editor, this stuff is pure gold to me.
First, what I am not going to go into: the Afghanistan conflict, its sense or legitimation or political implications; or the legalities of this kind of thing: does a leak like this break US law, and would that even be applicable? That’s for US lawyers to decide.
The basics first: What happened? Wikileaks got hold of some 91.000 military documents regarding the Afghanistan conflict, from analyst papers to ground reports. (What is Wikileaks?) Before releasing these documents themselves, they gave them in advance to three traditional news media: New York Times (US), The Guardian (UK) and Der Spiegel (Germany). (All of the links go directly to the Wikileaks specials.) After these media ran their exclusives, Wikileaks went public with the leaked documents, called the Afghan War Diaries:
The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers, and mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related details. (…) The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces’ activities. The reports do not generally cover top secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations.
So why is the Wikileaks story so big? It’s big not just because it’s something new and a huge scoop, but because it touches on so many complex and highly relevant issues:
- the issue at hand, the conflict in Afghanistan
- the way the US government handles information
- … and by extension, the bigger questions of truth & trust
- the relationship between governments and their citizens
- the relationship between US government and their allies, and how information flows between them
- the way media work today
- the (new?) role that media play today (trust center verifying information scoops rather than gathering them)
- the way the internet changes politics and media (and how news media not bound to nation states operate under different circumstances than we are used to)
- Is it irresponsible to leak documents?
For some great background and discussion, I recommend you jump straight to Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis, both who have great write-ups.
Trying not to repeat to many of Rosen’s and Jarvis’ points, there are a few things I find worth considering.
Truth & trust, governments & citizens The White House was clearly pissed off after seeing the Afghan War Logs emerge. Understandably so, after all those documents will clearly make a dent in the war effort, so to speak. However, legalities aside and assuming the documents are the real thing – the documents leaked are internal military documents. While it’s always painful to be called out on your own mistakes, it’s not job of the media to support certain policies; and it’s most certainly not the job of a whistleblower site like Wikileaks to support any policies. It’s their job to get out information so folks can make informed decisions.
It’s probably part of winning a military conflict to occasionally bluff and put a game face on. But it’s fair game to call that bluff; I’m guessing here, but I’d say that this can happen to a government just like to any poker player. These war reports seem to be such a case where the bluff (“the war is going kinda alright”) is called. The question is: Could the US government – instead of trying to clamp down on Wikileaks and the internal military source – try to make the best of the situation, for example by trying a crowdsourced effort to analyze the patterns of what has been going wrong in the conflict? (Might not work, but should be looked into by some of the smart folks within or around the US government.)
The new role of media What I found particularly interesting is the new role that media played in this case. This is not a case of investigative journalism by the media, but by a third (non-journalistic) party. We are talking about three of the most distinguished media outlets world wide. Yet, they did not get the scoop here, they did not have the sources inside. They were not the address the military sources wanted to talk to. (Why might be a moot question, but an interesting one still. Get back to that in a minute.) Instead, the media were there to a) spread the news and b) verify the information, to lend credibility. They served as a trust center for another organization’s scoop. Once they got the information, the media then did what they do best: sift through the material and make it more accessible, as well as spread the information.
As Jay Rosen put it, referring to a New York Times editor’s note:
“At the request of the White House, The Times also urged WikiLeaks to withhold any harmful material from its Web site.” There’s the new balance of power, right there. In the revised picture we find the state, which holds the secrets but is powerless to prevent their release; the stateless news organization, deciding how to release them; and the national newspaper in the middle, negotiating the terms of legitimacy between these two actors.
So, why Wikileaks not New York Times? We can only speculate why the internal source leaked the documents to Wikileaks and not to one of the major newspapers. But there are a number of considerations at play here: First, Wikileaks is much harder to subpoena than any traditional news organization that operates under US (or European) law. Second, Wikileaks is by nature very much distributed. They are a true internet-based, decentralized organization, making it harder to suppress information. Third, Wikileaks is independent, donation-funded, without anyone to report to. This can be good or bad, of course. And on certain topics, a political biased can be assumed. But again, it makes it harder to believe there could be a reason for Wikileaks to withhold this kind of information, much unlike the news organizations that also want to send their reporters into war zones as embedded journalists along the military. Fourth, Wikileaks knows about secure communications. Maybe Guardian, Spiegel and New York Times do too, but a source wouldn’t want to take any risks. Wikileaks are strong on anonymity. They are strong on crypto. They really know how to keep communication channels secure and anonymous. All of these combined make them a more secure place to go to than any single newsroom.
Is Wikileaks acting irresponsibly? One could make the case for either the value of keeping information secret, or for absolute transparency. In a military conflict, that’s a tough one. But it seems to be like Wikileaks is going to great lengths to be as careful and responsible as the overall context allows (once it’s decided to publish leaked info, that is). They are holding back a significant number of documents until further review and clean up (think removing names etc):
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
Giving the documents to some trusted traditional newspapers of making sure the information is getting a decent journalistic treatment, followed by full disclosure of all the source material for extra vetting.
In other words, it’s a perfect example of getting it all right: Responsible dealing with the information as well as working the media right.
Jeff Jarvis raises an interesting point in his post: Will leaks like this incentivize organisations not to write down as much because they fear leaks, leading in the long run to less transparency? I certainly hope not, but it’s not a fear I share. Large-scale organizations need documentation, and where there is documentation there is a chance of leaks.
What I’d hope for instead is that the mere chance of leaks alone will lead to more transparency up front. After all, if an organization is more transparent the chance of getting called out on grounds of hiding information is a lot lower.
We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, if you do appreciate this kind of document leak, I do recommend you consider donating for Wikileaks.
[permalink]There’s a war going on, and it’s not pretty. The old conflict between publicly funded and private media, and the fight about who regulates the whole sphere. Of course all of it was triggered by the internet. How could the net just allow information to be spread so easily and at such a low cost!
But jokes aside, there’s some seriously disturbing stuff going on right now. Namely, two focal points in this conflict about who should make media and under what conditions, and how should media be consumed.
Focal point #1: Google vs FTC
The FTC published a paper as basis for further discussion (“Staff Discussion Draft”, PDF) to evaluate the situation of news media today and to draft policy proposals. One of them: additional intellectual property rights to support news media against “free riding by news aggregators”. This by itself is one of the dumbest things I’ve read in a while. News aggregators (read: Google News), of course, channel traffic to the media sites. There’s no cannibalization going on, it’s the other way round. It’s good to see – and just fair to point out – that the draft also states that “expanded IP rights could restrict citizens’ access to this news, inhibit public discourse, and impinge upon free speech rights.” Yes, that it might well do.
Google reply on their Public Policy blog and the response is well worth reading:
If you prefer the summary, jump straight to Jeff Jarvis, who sides clearly with Google as well as I do: This is not really a legal battle, but one over business models. And protecting an old, broken system should not be in the FTC’s (or anyone’s) interest.
Focal point #2: German public broadcasters are “depublishing”
A similar problem is discussed in Germany these days, if maybe in slightly different environment. In Germany we’ve had strong (and well-funded, particularly compared to the US) public broadcasters. (Note: not newspapers.) These broadcasters have done a tremendous job in the past, and even though there has been a lot of criticism over budgets and spending and about certain areas of engagement, they have a fairly strong support on a societal level. They have a clear mandate to provide basic information in all areas (including entertainment), and at least kind-of-clear limits of their engagement (no dating sites etc). These limits are based mainly on protecting private companies from publicly funded competition.
And it’s this eternal conflict of interests (here: “the public” vs “private publishing corporations”) that’s at the core of the dilemma. Public broadcasters in Germany were always very limited on what they could do online. But now, content has to be “depublished”* after some time. (Depending on the kind of content, which is evaluated by a three step system of the more absurd kind of type, after a week, a year or some other time span.) The content won’t be deleted, but hidden.
(Links with some background in German: Tagesschau summary of the regulating Rundfunkstaatsvertrag, Tagesschau’s Jörg Sadrozinski’s take on Depublizieren.)
How much protection do private publishers need from the government?
Now this raises all kinds of interesting questions. (The biggest of which is of course: WTF? But let’s save that for another time.) Questions I cannot necessarily answer off the top of my head. Like: Should private broadcasters really be protected from public broadcasters? How much so? Are there certain fields where this protection should be stronger than others? (Sports? Mobile services?) But also: How can content that we paid for by our (publicly collected and handled) fees be locked away after we paid for it, and how can even more of our money be spent on locking it away? What happens to all the references in Wikipedia that linked to said public content? How can a generation of tax and fee payers be expected to pay for fees if the content won’t be available through the channels they use?
I cannot even remember the last time I watched TV at home, on a TV set, live, on the air. And I certainly won’t start now.
So we need to ask ourselves: How much protection do we want to give to publishers and broadcasters, and what price are we willing to pay?
There’s a war going on, and it’s not pretty.
- The word makes me want to invoke Godwin’s Law. But I’ll hold back, I promise.
Now here’s a bold move by a major newspaper: The Guardian is becoming a platform.
And boy, is that a smart move compared to many other newspapers that try to lock up their content and try charging readers directly, be it by subscription model or pay-per-view.
Quoting GigaOM:
While some newspapers like the Times of London and the New York Times have either implemented or are expected to launch paywalls for their content, The Guardian in Britain has taken the exact opposite approach: Not only does it give its content away for free to readers, but through its “open platform” and API, it allows developers and companies to take its content as well, and do whatever they want with it — including building it into commercial applications.
It’s interesting to see so much movement in the newspaper market. Just earlier today I’ve discussed with a friend how it comes that so many people don’t read newspapers anymore in paper. (Including myself: The days when I had a newspaper subscription are long gone. These days I occasionally buy a newspaper for certain articles – usually when journalist friends recommend it – or read all my stuff online, usually for free. I do buy print magazines and subscribe, for example, to Wired UK. Of course, that’s a purchase more as a fetish than for its actual use, plus I want to support some magazines because they rock. Not sure how a tablet device might change my behavior there. I also subscribe to a wearable magazine.) Long story short, a theory bubbled up: That maybe we (our group of freelancers in the discussion) don’t read newspapers anymore since we stopped commuting. Asking Twitter about this theory, the response was clear: Some pointed out that there are more reasons than just the commute. One was even harsher. One mentioned that other media like podcasts suffered the same problem. But no one defended newspapers. Ouch.
German newspaper taz announced to experiment with donations through Flattr. Traditionally left-leaning, taz had been ad-free online until 2006, for both better or worse: of course there’s not much money to be had without ads in a strong ad market, but there’s much less to lose in a bad ad market like we’ve seen recently. For taz with their strongly committed reader base, donations might turn out well – the rational certainly makes sense. The question will be: Is Flattr the right platform? It’s still tough to provide readers an easy, hassle-free way to send money your way on a non-subscription basis, particularly in Germany where credit cards just aren’t ubiquitous.
But back to the Guardian. Where German publishers have been complaining about Google News “stealing” their content and making money off of it (both parts of this statement not necessarily true as Google only quotes teasers and doesn’t run ads on Google News), the Guardian not only gives away their content, but encourages commercial use:
“We not only say that you can use the content in a commercial application, we encourage it,” Thorpe said. “It gets our content to places where it wouldn’t be otherwise, and then we can build relationships with content partners around that.” The platform, which is still in the experimental stage, has attracted about 2,000 developers who have signed up for the API and created over 200 apps and web services. Platform developer Matt McAlister has called it an attempt to “weave The Guardian into the fabric of the Internet.”
The Guardian’s “developer advocate” Chris Thorpe summarizes the move:
Update (31 May 2010): On a related note, the BBC plans to increase the number of outbound clicks from its site by 2013. That right: They aim to double the number of readers they send away. Someone got it right!
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