I write about Thomson Reuters‘ release of Calais 4.0 over on ZDNet today, and wanted to use this post to explore some of the broader context within which Calais should increasingly be considered.
As well as linking to ‘usual suspects’ in the Linked Data space such as the CIA Factbook, GeoNames, DBpedia, Musicbrainz and the like, Thomson Reuters is taking the additional step of providing access to parts of their information empire. Already recognised as one of the premiere sources for financial and company information on the global stage, the company is choosing to embed Thomson Reuters services such as stock tickers, information on corporate Boards, etc.
In a world in which everyone can participate, and in which citizen journalism, crowd sourcing and the rest are leading to powerful and wide-ranging disruptions to traditional media, Thomson Reuters is betting that authoritative, timely and branded data has value, and that opportunities exist to build that value by giving some previously expensive information away for free in order to jump-start a range of new and lucrative services.
Freebase employees once talked about a desire to become the canonical source of certain facts on the web; the go-to place for a class of information. Might Thomson Reuters have similar ambitions in the business information market, and might the undeniable (and free) value of the Calais web services be the hook that encourages a whole swathe of developers building applications for this market to perpetuate – and strengthen – the company’s reach?
This isn’t cynical, this isn’t devious, this isn’t ‘wrong,’ and there is absolutely no suggestion that the currently free services will ever incur charges for use. Instead, it’s an interesting example of a titan of Old Media thinking creatively about ways in which it can continue to have value in a changing world.
Casa Battló © Larry Miller 2003, and shared on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
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Paul Miller works at the interface between the worlds of Cloud Computing and the Semantic Web, providing the insights that enable you to exploit the next wave as we approach the World Wide Database.
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[...] in-depth look at the importance of authoritative sources in the emerging Linked Data ecosystem in this related post, and concentrate on the specifics of the Calais 4.0 release [...]
Paul,
As you can see “Data as a Service” is one of the major by-products of Amazon EC2 powered Cloud Computing. “Sweat & Brow” issues that have dogged database production and publishing for eons are starting to diminish; the data source provider now has a vehicle for monetization, thanks to the indellible virtues of de-referenceable URIs — the crux of Linked Data — as a canonical unit of branding and value delivery.
Like Freebase, Calais, adds another planet to the Linking Open Data (LOD) Solar System.
btw – symbiosis is the life blood of the “Data as a Service” universe
[...] Even in an Architecture of Participation, Thomson Reuters believes Content can be King (cloudofdata.com) [...]