In May 2005 the BBC launched a new developer network site initially called BBC Backstage, since re-named backstage.bbc.co.uk. In doing so they put the call out for people to remix their content, using their content RSS feeds and in future APIs. It marked a turning point for the BBC’s already impressive online efforts, because with backstage.bbc.co.uk they effectively loosened their control over some BBC content.
As with the vast majority of feeds or APIs from big companies, the BBC’s come with certain restrictions. For example, backstage.bbc.co.uk is specifically for non-commercial use:
“backstage.bbc.co.uk is for individual developers and designers to build things using BBC content and anyone who has an idea for how to use BBC content in new ways. It is not for big corporates to play around with. backstage.bbc.co.uk is for non-commercial use by the little people.”
It’s also worth noting that the reason BBC was able to release some of their content to external developers is because of their government remit to “build public value”.
Nevertheless, backstage.bbc.co.uk is a pointer to how big companies will open up their data in future. So it’s a great case study for what I’m calling Microcontent Design.
Low barriers to adoption and RSS
The first lesson from backstage.bbc.co.uk is to follow existing standards and make it was easy as possible for developers to use their content. The main method that backstage.bbc.co.uk uses to expose its data is RSS feeds. Here is the selection of RSS feeds available at time of writing:
- News Feeds
- Sport Feeds
- BBC Community Feeds
- Travel Feeds
- Weather Feeds
- Entertainment Feeds
- Radio and Music feeds
- TV Channel Feeds
Note though that all of the RSS feeds have only excerpts, not full text. So this is another restriction to backstage.bbc.co.uk. Nevertheless it’s a significant body of content that has been made available, because there are around 500 unique pieces of news posted each and every day from its network of over 5000 journalists.
One of the more interesting mashups that has been developed so far using backstage data is a BBC News/Wikipedia mashup, which mixes BBC news with links to Wikipedia articles. Its developer Stef Magdalinski described it as “a more open [BBC] News Online”. The two main features are that it “regexes out” capitalised phrases and acronyms, tests them against a database of wikipedia topic titles, and if the phrase is a topic in wikipedia then it’s turned into a hyperlink. It also “uses the technorati API to add a sidebar of links to blogs referencing the story”, enabling users to see who else in the blogosphere is talking about the story.
APIs
The BBC knows it’s important to release a wide set of APIs that reflect the range of content on bbc.co.uk. At time of writing they have plans for two APIs: Search (BBC Search, best links etc) and Postcoder (Query by geo-location data).
The Postcoder API actually brings to light an interesting fact about the BBC and their content. The geo-location data for the Postcoder API is provided by a third party, the Royal Mail. The problem is if the BBC provides co-ordinates of postcodes, then that would undercut commercial services the Royal Mail has with other parties. This is an issue in Britain, because geo-location is owned by various companies in the UK – whereas in other countries that data is freely available to the public. So the BBC licences the geo-location data and at the time of writing was unable to resyndicate it to third parties via backstage.
Data ownership affects the BBC too
Just as mashup developers are ultimately at the whim of API providers, it’s worth noting that sometimes API providers aren’t the ultimate data owner. In the case of backstage.bbc.co.uk, its inability to license geo-location data has meant delays in rolling out their Postcoder API.
And it’s not only APIs that are affected. A lot of the data on backstage, including RSS feeds like Travel data, is actually provided by third parties. The BBC has to license that data, in a way that lets them resyndicate it via backstage. Indeed a lot of public-facing companies like BBC and Google often don’t own the data they provide.
So ultimately, a lot of times the data owner needs to be convinced of the value of opening up their data via APIs and web services.
BBC backstage Project Leader Ben Metcalfe explained to me how they’ve been able to get data from third parties by outlining the benefits to them of opening data up to backstage. He tells them it will create innovation around their data. Plus with Intellectual Property rights staying with the data owners, they are free to contact a successful mashup producer directly. For example, Ben said that he’s pretty sure TeleAtlas (which owns some of the data used in Google Maps) is keeping tabs on what people are doing with Google Maps.
Ben also told me this is the reason why almost all backstage data is provided to developers on the condition it is used in a non-commercial manner. It’s so the actual data owner does not miss out on commercial contracts directly.
As Ben noted:
“A lot of this stems from the fact we are a media organization and not a technology company. Media, in the 21st centuary is about aggregating and buying in content and that’s the case with the BBC. We buy in more and more and do in-house less and less. And that’s reflected in our APIs – or feeds at least, for the time being.”
So even though the aim is for BBC to create low barriers for adoption, this isn’t as easy as it sounds! A lot of work has to be done to convince data owners of the value of releasing their data into the Web 2.0 world, outside their control.
Second pic: Ben Metcalfe
To be continued…
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)