TimesOpen Keynote: Technology and the Future of the Newspaper

Technology and the
future of the newspaper
Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media, Inc.
www.oreilly.com

NY Times TimesOpen
February 20, 2009

Thursday, February 19, 2009

How many of you have O’Reilly books?


What We Really Do At O'Reilly

Change the world by spreading the
knowledge of innovators


Some Examples

• First books on Linux and Perl - 1991
• First book on the internet, covered WWW
when there were only 200 web sites - 1992
• Launched first commercial web site, 1993
• First advocacy about web services - 1997
• Organized meeting where term “open
source” was adopted - 1998
• Coined term Web 2.0 to describe rules for
new internet platform - 2004
• Make: celebrates the new DIY - 2006
• Now working on “Government 2.0”


How we do it

• Find interesting technologies and people
innovating from the edge

• Amplify their effectiveness by spreading
the information needed for others to
follow them.

• Books


How we do it


follow them.

• Books, Conferences


How we do it

follow them.

• Books, Conferences, Online


quot;The future is here. It's just not
evenly distributed yet.quot;

--William Gibson


NYT Research Labs


Five Futures That Are
Changing Newspapers
Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media, Inc.
www.oreilly.com

NY Times TimesOpen
February 20, 2009


1. “Harnessing Collective
Intelligence”


as is wikipedia


Digg is an obvious example of
crowdsourcing


But Google teaches us something
deeper


Consider pagerank


Web 2.0 is about finding meaning
in user-generated data,
and turning that meaning into real-
time user-facing services


Wesabe does this with its tips


comparing two merchants based on
credit card data


Real-time is critical.


Google, Walmart &
mybarackobama.com - Obama’s


Is there a newspaper equivalent to
Project Houdini?

Don’t show it to me again.


The network as platform means that
competitive advantage goes to systems
that harness network effects to get
better the more people use them.


Questions for newspapers

• What assets do you have that increase in
value through participation?
– Knowledge about your readers?
– Knowledge from your readers?
– Your brand as it is spread by others?
– Your accumulated history?
• What assets do you have that benefit from
the real time nature of online information?
• How do you involve your readers in
increasing the value of what you do?

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2. Social Networking


social network graph of
congressional twitterers


my facebook news feed


my twitter input feed


my twitter output feed


retweetradar


nivi and the @timoreilly bump


NyTimes twitter feed for contrast


This is important!

• In social networks, you gain and bestow
status through those you associate with
• A key function of a publishing brand is the
bestowal of status by what you pay attention
to
• If you only pay attention to yourself, you
aren’t as valuable to your community
– You don’t learn as much from your readers
– You don’t bind them to you by amplifying their
voice


NY Times letters to the editor


Times People - it’s a ghost town for
me


Now imagine if my twitter or
facebook friends were there

• A key question for all of us is when to lead,
and when to follow


NY Times most popular articles


But take a closer look at how Digg
involves its readers and gives them


Opportunities?

• All those people who emailed stories
probably commented in their email. Invite
them to share?
• Does this make them more valuable to
advertisers?
• Most blogged? Where are the links?
• Most mailed ≠ most blogged
• If I’ve already read it, I might want to “digg” it,
twitter it, tag it in del.icio.us? Too geeky for
most readers? Add configuration to my
subscription


NY Times comments - a lot of
comments - too many to read and


Markmail, a tool for mailing lists,
could be useful?


markmail identifies the most frequent
posters on a topic


NY Times comment API


3. Programming as Journalism


USAspending.gov

46

47

Stimuluswatch.org


Instedd


Global Virus Forecasting Initiative


Adrian Holovaty at LJWorld.com -
creating a context for people to share

51

chicagocrime.org & database driven
local news

52

everyblock.com


outside.in


The shakeshack and how users are
instrumenting it with twitter

55

Hyper-local is just the beginning

56

Instrumenting the World

We are moving out of the world in which
people typing on keyboards will drive
collective intelligence applications.
Increasingly, applications are driven by new
kinds of sensors.


how good collective sensor data is
getting - flickr geotagged photos

58

The smart phone plus local search.
Today pizza, tomorrow news?


4. The Internet As Platform


Two Types of Platform
• One Ring to Rule Them All

• Small Pieces Loosely Joined

61

Let’s start with the web itself

62

A NY Times web page that only links
to itself


A well formed blog that is part of the
“small pieces loosely joined” world


We screwed up too - Safari books
online


In porting over old media, we forgot
the links


Oops!


new tools like apture let you keep
people on your site while also giving


More apture


Now let’s move on to web services

70

Now let’s take this to APIs. Google
Maps king of the hill, per


housingmaps.com - the very first
Google maps mashup
• It was a “hack.” Google learned from it,
quickly, and turned it into a supported feature


Apple brings geotagging to iPhoto
via Gmaps


But look - people can also PUT data
on google. Museum layer on Google


Google maps as a model

• Mashups were invented by users - the API
came later to support them
• It’s open
• It’s two-way: innovations outside Google can
be brought onto Google


If you’re really building a platform,
your customers and partners build
new features before you do


Twitter hashtags and news - both
hashtags and the real time search


Stocktwits


tweetdeck


peoplebrowsr


Why I like the twhirl client


Ginx has some interesting new
features


bit.ly as a twitter client
• How about oering this kind of thing from the NYT?


bit.ly and the power of instant
tracking


bit.ly-twitter integration


Lessons from Twitter

• Do one thing and do it well
• Let others build on what you do, even if it
appears to compete with you
• When users innovate, support their
behaviors in your platform (@, #, $)
• “Insert and extend” :-)


5. Asymmetric Competition


Top sites on the internet, 2005
Rank Company # Employees
1 Yahoo 9,000
2 TimeWarner 85,000
3 Microsoft 61,000
4 Google 5,000
5 eBay 11,000
6 News Corp 38,000
7 Craigslist 18
8 Disney 129,000
9 BBC 60,000
10 IAC 26,000


NY Times vs Washpost huffpost on
compete


nytimes.com vs digg on compete


Voiceofsandiego.org

• Some people say that the answer is for
investigative journalism to become a non-
profit activity


micropayments


You pick the hat to fit the head


What Job Does a Newspaper Do?

•http://
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3376845.jpg?
v=1c=ViewImagesk=2d=8
9B856506CE5465432B9C151
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38


What Job Does a Newspaper Do?

• “All the News That’s Fit to Print”
• Serious Investigative Reporting
• Connection to local community
• Driving attention to what’s important
• Curation and bestowal of status
• Entertainment
• ...

• There may be different answers for each of
these jobs


Taking a Road Trip

• http://autos.canada.com/greatcanadianroadtrip/index.html


It’s not a tour of gas stations!


This might be where you end up

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/12/opinion/0613-GASPUMPS_index.html



People need what newspapers do

• You are members of a great profession
• Billions of people are coming online, waiting
to be taught, informed, entertained
• “The best way to predict the future is to
invent it”*

*Alan Kay


For More Information

• What is Web 2.0?
http://www.oreillynet.com/go/web2
• http://tim.oreilly.com
• http://radar.oreilly.com

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