Snapshots from the Edge: Early Feedback, Results are Positive for New York Times APIs

It's been almost four months since the New York Times released its first application programming interface, which allows developers to play with New York Times content and create programs, and gives the public new digital ways to interact with that content.

Later this month, the newspaper will launch a search API, which "will give people a lot of power and flexibility," said Marc Frons, chief technology officer for digital operations at The New York Times Co. The newspaper will also launch an applications showcase and discussion area at prototype.nytimes.com, and host a developer's conference.

So far, Frons said, "I think it's going great in the sense that we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from the development community."

The newspaper launched its first API in October with goal of releasing an entire series of them. In fact, the company has now released six APIs: Campaign Finance, Best Sellers, and Community, Congress, Movie Reviews and TimesTags, which "matches your query to the controlled vocabularies that fuel NYTimes.com metadata."

"Once the search API is out, that will handle a huge piece of our content and be pretty interesting," Frons said. "I would say by the middle of this year, we'll have a good idea on whether we got any traction around this or not."

The search API is "going to be the most powerful API," Frons said. That API "really will give developers a window into all New York Times content going back to 1981, and enable them to search and sort and mix and match headlines and summaries of our articles with other data."

Building APIs are a part of the overall software development philosophy of the newspaper’s Web site, so they had minimal impact on other projects. In fact, the APIs have helped accelerate some new features because they make overall development easier, Frons explained.

"In terms of our own development, we've been doing things around this services-based way of dealing with data and information for a while, so it's not earth shattering or revolutionary. It's really just a tool, and how you use it is what matters."

Resources and Requirements

The New York Times worked with San Francisco-based Mashery, Inc. to release the APIs. Mashery served as a middle layer between The New York Times Co. and the developer community by handling many of the details of the API releases, such as credentialing developers who request a key, managing the business development rules and providing reports to The New York Times Co.

"Any provider of an API needs to have this so they can turn their internal service into an API," said Mashery CEO Oren Michels. Other Mashery clients include Lonely Planet and Netflix.

APIs are an effective way to leverage the developer community. Since many news organizations are strapped for technology resources, Frons said, it's a smart thing to try. "You don't have to be a deep, national brand like The New York Times."

Local search and local content are extremely valuable to newspapers and their readers, Michels said.

People who are traveling or who have moved away from the newspaper's local market may appreciate the content consumption options that APIs can ultimately provide. Right now, Web users can go to the newspaper's site to catch up on local news, but apps that come from developers using the API can provide many other options.

"People who are in their teens and early 20s insist on customizing everything…. If you're going to play in that world, you need too provide building blocks, not just voice of god," Michels said. APIs are a way to do that.

Early Results
By the end of last year, hundreds of developers had downloaded an API key and the newspaper reported positive feedback.

Some of the early API-based projects are already featured in a mini-gallery at developer.nytimes.com. There are two movies-related APIs in the gallery. One of these, nyt.flix, is an Android-based application that lets users browse and search through New York Times' movie reviews. (See the image above for a sample page from this app.) Another gallery item is a PHP application that combines the Campaign Finance API and a Google Chart API to let users create customized campaign finance data charts.