The keynote I gave at the Times Open event: http://timesopen.com (#timesopen on twitter) Main point: publishing thrives when it bestows status on members of a community. What publishing can learn from twitter. Why the NY Times approach to community, focusing just on readers, misses this. Why Open APIs and platforms are good :-) Hurrah for the new TimesOpen APIs.
Power point presentation on enterprise performance management
TimesOpen Keynote: Technology and the Future of the Newspaper
1. 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
2. How many of you have O’Reilly books?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
3. What We Really Do At O'Reilly
Change the world by spreading the
knowledge of innovators
Thursday, February 19, 2009
4. 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”
Thursday, February 19, 2009
5. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
6. 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, Conferences
Thursday, February 19, 2009
7. 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, Conferences, Online
Thursday, February 19, 2009
8. quot;The future is here. It's just not
evenly distributed yet.quot;
--William Gibson
Thursday, February 19, 2009
11. Five Futures That Are
Changing Newspapers
Tim O’Reilly
O’Reilly Media, Inc.
www.oreilly.com
NY Times TimesOpen
February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
23. Is there a newspaper equivalent to
Project Houdini?
Don’t show it to me again.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
24. The network as platform means that
competitive advantage goes to systems
that harness network effects to get
better the more people use them.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
25. 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?
25
Thursday, February 19, 2009
34. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
36. Times People - it’s a ghost town for
me
Thursday, February 19, 2009
37. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
38. NY Times most popular articles
Thursday, February 19, 2009
39. But take a closer look at how Digg
involves its readers and gives them
Thursday, February 19, 2009
40. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
41. NY Times comments - a lot of
comments - too many to read and
Thursday, February 19, 2009
42. Markmail, a tool for mailing lists,
could be useful?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
57. 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.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
58. how good collective sensor data is
getting - flickr geotagged photos
58
Thursday, February 19, 2009
59. The smart phone plus local search.
Today pizza, tomorrow news?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
70. Now let’s move on to web services
70
Thursday, February 19, 2009
71. Now let’s take this to APIs. Google
Maps king of the hill, per
Thursday, February 19, 2009
72. housingmaps.com - the very first
Google maps mashup
• It was a “hack.” Google learned from it,
quickly, and turned it into a supported feature
Thursday, February 19, 2009
74. But look - people can also PUT data
on google. Museum layer on Google
Thursday, February 19, 2009
75. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
76. If you’re really building a platform,
your customers and partners build
new features before you do
Thursday, February 19, 2009
77. Twitter hashtags and news - both
hashtags and the real time search
Thursday, February 19, 2009
87. 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” :-)
Thursday, February 19, 2009
94. You pick the hat to fit the head
Thursday, February 19, 2009
95. What Job Does a Newspaper Do?
•http://
cache.gettyimages.com/xc/
3376845.jpg?
v=1c=ViewImagesk=2d=8
9B856506CE5465432B9C151
F29BA0CBA55A1E4F32AD31
38
Thursday, February 19, 2009
96. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
97. Taking a Road Trip
• http://autos.canada.com/greatcanadianroadtrip/index.html
Thursday, February 19, 2009
98. Taking a Road Trip
• http://autos.canada.com/greatcanadianroadtrip/index.html
Thursday, February 19, 2009
99. It’s not a tour of gas stations!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
100. This might be where you end up
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/12/opinion/0613-GASPUMPS_index.html
Thursday, February 19, 2009
101. 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
Thursday, February 19, 2009
102. For More Information
• What is Web 2.0?
http://www.oreillynet.com/go/web2
• http://tim.oreilly.com
• http://radar.oreilly.com
101
Thursday, February 19, 2009