The Future Of Information or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The API

RSS has drastically changed the way in which we experience media. In a recent article in Ad Age, Steve Rubel talks about a statistic that says, only 11% of internet users subscribe to RSS feeds. Rubel makes the following statement:

RSS is easy and relatively cheap to adopt, so there's no reason for marketers to avoid it -- but I don't see it growing rapidly

I agree with Rubel that there will not be a major uptick in internet users knowlingly subscribing to RSS feeds. That being said, I think that this statistic is fairly insignificant, as RSS drives the way in which a great deal of  information is spread across the net, whether consumers are aware of it or not. RSS is also a key element in feeding infomration to search engines. RSS is one of the fundamental components behind the social web.

Another key element that has become part of the backbone of the social web is the API. I recently wrote an article for Minonline explaining the significance of The New York Times campaign finance API (as well as other API's recently launched).

The article starts with the following:

The world of media and information has reached a crossroads. The speed at which information is disseminated has increased exponentially. This new, lightning fast mediation has made the reliance on traditional media vehicles impractical for many people—and subsequently has led to the downturn of many traditional media companies.

Amidst a sea of confusion and , at times, outright gloom; one traditional media company has shined like a light—guiding other struggling media companies to the shores of restitution. That company is none other than The Grey Lady; The New York Times.

The New York Times Company recently launched The Campaign Finance API (the first API, in a series API’s). It certainly was a big day for big media—but this launch did not get a whole lot of fanfare. Neither did the subsequent launches of the TimesTags API and the Times Movie Reviews API.

The lack of mainstream attention towards these launches came as no surprise to me; still, if you are in the media industry (especially publishing) and this news did not jolt your world a little bit, you may want to keep reading.

If you want to check out the rest of the article, head over to Minoline.com.

Yes, I would love to read the rest of the article, please take me there