Video : Guardian Platform Product Management

The Guardian is one of the most innovative media companies, and has led the way on building an open platform for the wealth of content and data they have. In the Guardian’s long history, content delivery has evolved from the printed page to today’s multi platform environment where the latest news stories are published not just in print, but on the web, mobile apps, blogs, audio and video and twitter. Here Stephen Dunn discusses how they have managed the development of this platform, and how to product manage large platforms.

The Guardian has developed a strategy around Open In – bringing in data and apps from the internet, and Open Out – enabling partners to build applications using Guardian content and services. This strategy doesn’t just enable the Guardian to work with external partners, but powers their own mobile apps and other products – in fact product development is the main driver in the continuing development of the platform.

Comments 2

Hi Paul.

I don’t know where the actual phrase came from – we started using it publically after Matt McAlister came to the Guardian to lead the Developer Network in 2008.

However, regarding Open In/Open Out as an idea… we have a pair of wiki pages on our intranet we wrote about this split in Nov 2004.

The pages were called “Webservice Engine Projects” (which was basically Open In), and “API Projects” (which was Open Out) both were under the umbrella topic proposing a “GU Everywhere” project.
Took a while to actually get it to launch though!

The name GU Everywhere, that was inspired by Amazon’s Amazon Everywhere. 🙂

I was wondering where the idea for “Open In / Open Out” came from…?

The first time I heard it phrased like that was at an OPA confernce in 2007, which I blogged about here (see point #3): http://twopointoh.co.uk/2007/03/10/staying-competitive-in-the-digital-era-jeffery-rasport-marketspace-llc/

It also made its way onto my “Web 2.0 strategy” presentation in slide #6: http://twopointoh.co.uk/2007/08/21/a-web-20-strategy-slideshow/

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About the author

Martin Eriksson

Martin Eriksson has 25+ years experience building world-class online products in both corporate and start-up environments for global brands such as...