The Guardian's move to open up its content via an API is garnering well-deserved praise, but the component that caught my eye is the advertising hook:
The Guardian is positioning its Open Platform as a commercial venture, requiring partners to carry its advertising as part of its terms and conditions ... [Link added.]
This is exactly the type of thinking we need. The Web is inherently distributed and its value comes from the organic connections between content. Content and container are no longer tethered, yet established business models rely on audiences interacting with content in specific locations. This discrepancy between how Web content should work and how publishers need it to work has hindered development; publishers just couldn't figure out how to make money by letting their content roam free. But The Guardian's Open Platform flips the model: advertising is tied to the content, not the container.
Of course, free-range content that can appear virtually anywhere is bound to make conservative advertisers squeamish, so it remains to be seen if The Guardian can actually sell ads associated with the Open Platform. Nonetheless, Open Content and similar efforts are an important step in the right direction.
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