The Open Strategy
-- or how I stopped worrying
about my web site and learned
to love the whole Internet
Matt McAlister
Head of Guardian Developer Network
Guardian News & Media

• Why care about openness
• Platforms and ecosystems
• Opening out and opening in
• Business benefits

How big is the Internet?
1 Billion
Internet
Users!

How big is the Internet?
1T
Google’s Search Index
26M
1B
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garibaldi/349036152/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsaboyd/2344155276/

Ad networks embed themselves
wherever the users are
Top 15 Ad Networks March 2008
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Total Unique Visitors
% Reach
(000)
Total Internet : Total Audience 188,010 100.0
Platform-A* 170,537 90.7
Yahoo! Network 160,336 85.3
Google Ad Network 152,048 80.9
Specific Media 145,554 77.4
ValueClick Networks 140,091 74.5
Tribal Fusion 135,640 72.1
Casale Media Network 129,399 68.8
DRIVEpm 124,333 66.1
adconion media group 117,469 62.5
interCLICK 108,818 57.9
Traffic Marketplace 105,420 56.1
Collective Media 100,151 53.3
24/7 Real Media 94,525 50.3
ADSDAQ by ContextWeb 94,459 50.2
Burst Media 93,291 49.6
Source: ComScore, April 2008 http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2184

The Google content network reaches over 75% of
unique internet users in more than 20 languages and
over 100 countries. As a result, if you advertise on
both the Google search network and the Google
content network,
you have the potential to reach three of every four
unique Internet users on Earth

Go to where the users are
“In the new distributed world you want to be
where the people are.
The media brand is less a destination and a
magnet to draw people there than a label once
you’ve found the content, wherever and however
you found it.”
- Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine, “APIs: The new distribution”

“Although NPR.org is still
critical to our strategy, we
can no longer rely
exclusively on the site as a
way to reach people.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2008/11/nprs_open_content_strategy.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heliopaz/2007012694/

The Open Strategy
OPEN IN OPEN OUT
Drive engagement Increase reach by
by bringing in distributing
services from the services across the
Internet Internet

Platforms and ecosystems

“The importance of any given
experiment isn’t apparent at the
moment it appears; big changes
stall, small changes spread.
Even the revolutionaries can’t
predict what will happen.”
Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”

Ecosystem dynamics
Hosts Food chains
Parasites Producers
Reproduction Consumers
Waste products Evolution
Fuel and energy

http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2009/03/the-following-is-a-speech-i-gave-yesterday-at-the-south-by-southwest-interactive-festival-in-austiniif-you-happened-to-being.html

Platform concepts compared
HBR, “Platform-Mediated Networks:Definitions and Core Concepts”, Jan 2007

Related example: Motorcycle manufacturing
“In contrast to more traditional, top-down
approaches, Toyota assemblers succeed not by
preparing detailed design drawings of components
and subsystems for their suppliers but by defining
only a product's key modules in rough design
blueprints and specifying broad performance
parameters, such as weight and size.
Toyota’s suppliers take collective responsibility for
the detailed design of components and subsystems.
Since they are free to improvise within broad limits,
they have rapidly cut their costs and improved the
quality of their products.”
- John Hagel and John Seely Brown, Connecting Globalization & Innovation

A new view of the customer

Increased focus on partners
Partners
Users
Visitors

What do they want?
High quality and unique content
Reliable and easy-to-use tools
Ways to make money
Ways to get distribution
Confidence that they matter as customers

Partners show
success and
become evangelists
Ecosystem gets
Partners find ways
stronger and more
to take advantage
attractive for
of the platform
partners

500+ Twitter Apps

Examples: Open Out and Open In
Content
User engagement
Applications and tools
Revenue streams

Opening Out

Open Out: RSS

Open Out: Social Networks

Open Out: Applications

Open Out: Tools

Give partners access to your data
mysite.com
startup.com
newapp.com
Publisher Platform

Opening In

Open In: Users

Open In: User Behaviors
“One of the key lessons of the Web 2.0 era is this:
Users add value. But only a small percentage of users
will go to the trouble of adding value to your
application via explicit means.
Therefore, Web 2.0 companies set inclusive defaults
for aggregating user data and building value as a
side-effect of ordinary use of the application…
They build systems that get better the more people
use them. ”
Tim O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0?”, September 2005

Open In: Applications

http://www.slideshare.net/fedecarg/open-platforms-and-apis

Business Benefits

Common view of the benefits
Drive traffic back to your web site
Innovate faster = cost savings
Improve reach
Extend advertising and licensing models

Direct revenue

• Advertisers use the ad
networks to maximize
reach
• …but targeting is
increasing in priority

Encouraging use

The scary stuff
How do I prevent misrepresentations of the
brand and our content?
Can we turn it off?
Who is using our stuff?

Create the conditions for growth
Access
Redistribution
Reuse
Absence of Technological Restriction
Attribution
Integrity
No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
Distribution of License
License Must Not Be Specific to a Package
License Must Not Restrict the Distribution of Other Works

“You may attach advertising to
your web site which includes
Guardian content without
accounting to us for any share in
the revenue generated.”

Conclusion

The Network is the Computer
The network effect is a characteristic
that causes a good or service to have
a value to a potential customer
dependent on the number of customers
already owning that good or using
that service.
For example, by purchasing a
telephone a person makes other
telephones more useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects

“When all that is solid is melting
into air it’s important that we try
to imagine how we’d like the
future to turn out and set our
sights on that, and not just
struggle to keep the past alive for
a few more years.”
Steven Berlin Johnson, “Old Growth Media and the Future of News”

Ecosystems can flatten markets
\"The average export price of Chinese
[motorcycles] has dropped from $700
in the late 1990's to under $200 in
2002. The impact on rivals has been
brutal: Honda's share of Vietnam's
motorcycle market, for instance,
dropped from nearly 90 percent in 1997
to 30 percent in 2002.“

Thank you.
Matt McAlister
matt.mcalister@guardian.co.uk