The Open Platform launch earlier this month was one of the more exciting days I’ve had in a long time. We’ve done a good thing at the Guardian, and it seems we’re not alone in thinking that.
Here are some of my favorite Twitter posts about the launch (more here):
- @IanYorston “Guardian Open Platform may be the most interesting thing to happen to newspapers in ages”
- @netspaze “When major newspapers are closing down, UK’s Guardian is opening up.”
- @lisov “Oh my! Take a look at what The Guardian’s done! An open platform!”
- @newscred “The Guardian’s Open Platform is an awesome initiative, their support & developer engagement is impressive.”
- @dreamingspires “The Guardian open platform is a genius idea. maybe the way forward for newspapers.”
- @estragon “Is this the future of journalism?”
- @evirtus “Seriously impressed by The Guardian Open Platform! The future of news?”
- @kate_butler “THANK YOU http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform i love you more than ever.”
- @matlock “Guardian Open Platform is a fantastic piece of work. not jealous at all, honestly. 😉 ”
- @r1tz “Serious kudos to the Guardian for launching the open API”
- @tomskitomski “Thinking that Guardian’s Open Platform is what BBC Backstage could and should have become.”
- @adrianholovaty “Super impressed with the Guardian’s API.”
- @SamShepherd “Guardian Open Platform – I am a) impressed and b) disheartened. the gulf between the likely-to-survive and the soon-to-be-bankrupt widens”
And here are some of the best quotes from the media and blogosphere (more here):
- “The Guardian is showing some guts by embracing new business models instead of clinging on to old, defunct ones.” (Mashable)
- “The media brand is less a destination and a magnet to draw people there than a label once you’ve found the content, wherever and however you found it. So the more places you can find it, the better.†(Jeff Jarvis)
- “a whole bunch of smart, enthusiastic developers are going to leap on the Open Platform API and use it to make products that use news content in interesting ways. And the insights won’t cost Guardian a cent (penny?) in testing or development costs.” (LiveMint)
- “Guardian Open Platform is a chasmic leap into the future. It is a work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure will have a dramatic impact in the news market. The Guardian is already a market leader in the online space but Open Platform is revolutionary. It makes all of their major competitors look timid.” (Tom Watson, MP)
This is my personal favorite…
- “If content is king, then this is service is a hundred of the king’s best horses, and thousands of his best messengers, sending the Guardian far and wide. A misstep online is unlikely to cost the Guardian much, and should only encourage competitors innovation—the industry sure needs it.
With this move, the Guardian redraw of where the boundaries of the newspaper industry lie, using to technology to reach as far as possible. It’s enough to make Conrad Black spit his prison breakfast all over his email-inbox.” (Bad Idea Magazine)
The feedback we’ve heard while participating in various events this month has also been very very positive.
Phil Wills and Mat Wall were both part of QCon London. - Simon Willison was on a panel at SXSW with The New York Times, NPR, Wired and DayLife talking about “the technical hurdles, the internal arguments, the surprising ways in which people have discovered new ways of looking at the news.”
Simon was also part of Future of Web Apps in Dublin which was a few days before our launch.
- I shared some of the thinking behind the Open Platform at Changing Media Summit in London last week in a talk called “The Open Strategy“. That presentation is here:
(Changing Media Summit is “for anyone concerned with creative and commercial success in the digital age. It is aimed at senior executives responsible for strategies in digital, online, new media, mobile, marketing, branding, finance, comms, content, audio and more.”)
- We also hosted the Rewired State event earlier in the month, and BarCamp London is going to be in our Kings Place offices this weekend which we’re really looking forward to.
There’s a ton of work to do to move closer to our vision for the platform. If we are going to be successful in weaving the Guardian into the fabric of the Internet, then we need to grow the services we rolled out already and develop the additional services that will round out the offering.
But if the Open Platform launch was about creating the conditions for positive things to happen, then I think we’re off to a really good start.