Suburbified.com uses the New York Times API to pull articles about New York’s many suburbs onto their own site and arrange them on a simple to use map of the area. So, if you’re looking for information about an area you simply click on the map and can read articles from the NY Times.
As a business, the logical move is to
- extend the reach beyond the suburbs and include areas in New York City
- pull in articles from other well-known sources
- hook up with real estate agents to provide services to them
- offer local advertising
By making smart use of other people’s content – and presenting it in a user-friendly fashion – Suburbified has created a potentially profitable content-based business model.
The NY Times must certainly be applauded for making this content available via their API. It’s an excellent way to drive traffic back to the site and shows an understanding of how the internet is changing. (Although you could argue that some of the ideas that are bound to come out of their newly released API should have been done in house.)
So, now, what about every other newspaper out there, jealously guarding their news and editorial content? What would happen if they opened up to, and even welcomed, the armies of developers who would gladly help share and promote their content – provided they could?
Via: KillerStartups
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Mark, I have gotten a lot of questions in the past few days on why I could give up my URL, http://www.b2bcontentmarketing.com to promote other peoples content. Frankly, I don’t make money writing content, yet visitors to my website typically need it, after all what’s the sense of buying our content publishing platform if our clients don’t have appropriate content that ties to a visitors buying life cycle? Using our site to match buyers and sellers makes sense and I add value to both buyer and seller. Will it help me sell more publishing software? Maybe or maybe not, for the moment I am satisfied in servicing constituents as a facilitator, when they do look to update their web publishing platform, I hope to be invited to the dance.
Great article.
We’re launching a marketing website that has similar aims – to provide free, practical content (In this case marketing advice) which is aimed specifically at SMEs.
Check out our blog – http://marketingdonutblog.co.uk/
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