* New York Times Campaign Finance API
It’s one thing to give away your product, but quite another to give it away with the full knowledge that someone else might use it in a way or for a reason that you haven’t thought of. That rather goes against the grain of old school marketers.
Even so, as a way of promoting and consolidating a brand giving away ice cream or doughnuts isn’t like giving away data. When its bits rather than atoms the freebies are a different proposition entirely because, in general, organizations see turning their hard won data loose free and gratis as violating every fundamental percept of business.
But here’s the thing: When that data is constantly evolving and therefore constantly becoming obsolete there’s actually no reason not to turn it loose.
This is, I suspect, the thinking that underlines the recent move by the New York Times to make their first API available to the public.
Announced in its Open Blog (tag: “All the codes that’s fit to printf()”) The Times explains:
“When we first started talking about creating and releasing APIs for databases collected by The Times, campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission was a natural choice. The upcoming presidential election has seen record fund-raising by the candidates and a host of new donors. Now we want our users to be able to analyze and reuse some of the data we’ve been looking at while reporting on the campaign.”
I think this is a very clever and perhaps even prescient move on the part of The Times. The idea that holding on to data after its “sell by” date is a mistake, in most cases, is obviously wrong, but the idea that you get more brand mindshare and more credibility through turning loose something that is a continuously devaluing asset is, I submit, brilliant.
The blog continues: “The Campaign Finance map on NYTimes.com — now you can make your own initial version of the Campaign Finance API that offers overall figures for presidential candidates, as well as state-by-state and ZIP code totals for specific candidates. In addition, the API supports a contributor name search using any of the following parameters: first name, last name and ZIP code.”
Just imagine what it’s going to be like as more companies see the light and start exposing resources that have little value to them but huge community value. The news landscape of a few years hence could look very different as all of these API-based resources become integrated into applications that in quasi real time slice and dice and analyze everything from political donations to the price of butter in the supermarkets near you.
All of the gory details of the New York Times Campaign Finance API are now available and the terms of use are also published – the latter basically forbids you to use the service competitively with The Times, resell its service, or do anything it wouldn’t approve of. All in all the terms are quite reasonable.
Mark my words, this is a sign of things to come.
