APIs: The Future of Information
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Adam Broitman

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The world of media and information has reached a crossroads. The speed at which information is disseminated has increased exponentially.  This new, lightning fast mediation has made the reliance on traditional media vehicles impractical for many people—and subsequently has led to the downturn of many traditional media companies.

Amidst a sea of confusion and , at times, outright gloom; one traditional media company has shined like a light—guiding other struggling media companies to the shores of restitution. That company is none other than The Grey Lady; The New York Times. 

The New York Times Company recently launched The Campaign Finance API (the first API, in a series API’s).  It certainly was a big day for big media—but this launch did not get a whole lot of fanfare. Neither did the subsequent launches of the TimesTags API and the Times Movie Reviews API.

The lack of mainstream attention towards these launches came as no surprise to me; still, if you are in the media industry (especially publishing) and this news did not jolt your world a little bit, you may want to keep reading.

What Is An API and Why Should I Care?

Wikipedia defines an API as; a set of functions, procedures, methods or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs.

For the purpose of understanding why The New York Times API’s are significant—think of an API as; a set of building blocks with specific language describing what the blocks are, but not specifically how you should use them. Two of the more popular API’s today are Facebook’s API and the Google Maps API. Each API provides raw data for software developers to build upon—adding context that is particularly useful to the target audience of the application. Most of us have seen examples of custom versions of Google maps, and anyone who is on Facebook has probably come across a flying sheep or some other application that was built by a third party. These are examples of applications built using an API.

Get to the Point: Why Are the New York Times API’s so Significant?

Say you are a movie buff who decided to create an amateur movie review site.  Along with every one of your reviews you want to include one of The New York Time’s 22,000 movie reviews (dating back to 1924). In theory (as there are rules that govern the use of the API) you can build an application that automatically pulls the movie review, and all information that The New York Times has on the movie you are reviewing, into a format that you designed for presentation on your site. 

You may be asking, “How will The New York Times make money off such a proposition?” While the answer is not yet clear, the distribution of valuable data as a service is clear—and where there is value, there is opportunity for revenue.

Information wants to be Free

The above statement is a battle cry for many content creators in the 21^st century. This statement is, however, often misinterpreted. It is not that people want content to be without a price tag—rather, many modern publishers believe that the open sourcing of information can foster collaboration or “mashups” of information –creating a much higher level of value for consumers. Whether or not you agree with this edict, the fact that The New York Times is adopting this mode of thinking should have you thinking about the future of information services.

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