British newspaper The Guardian launches an API

I just couldn’t believe my own eyes. The Guardian launches “Open Platform, a service that will allow partners to reuse guardian.co.uk content and data for free”. That sounds like an API! An API? Launched by another big news corporation? Are they finally getting that they at least should try to share their valuable data? Revolution!?

Well, here’s what The Guardian itself has to say about Open Platform:

The Open Platform is the suite of services that make it possible for our partners to build applications with the Guardian. We’ve opened up our platform so that everyone can benefit from our journalism, our brand, and the technologies that power guardian.co.uk.

As a start Open Platform offers two services:

1. The Content API is a mechanism for getting Guardian content. You can query our content database for articles and get them back in formats that are geared toward integration with other internet applications.

2. The Data Store is a collection of important and high quality data sets curated by Guardian journalists. You can find useful data here, download it, and integrate it with other internet applications.

I didn’t have much time to check it out yet. But apart from some serious buts the fact that an old media corporation launches an API makes me smile. Check the Open Platform out for yourself.