Some things are predictable. Anyone could have guessed that The Beatles would be among the top-10 favorite bands of the NPR community. (For the record, it's number two, behind Radiohead.)

NPR Community: Most popular music wordle.com

 

But other things are surprising: The science fiction film Blade Runner is the second favorite after the classic romance Casablanca.

These are the things we know after digging through some of the favorites you listed in your NPR.org profiles. Above is a crude tag cloud of the community's favorite music. Below is another based on listed hobbies. (Click on the image to get an enlarged version.)

NPR Community: Most popular hobbies. wordle.com

 

We're learning lots -- the most listed area of expertise? Music. Favorite program? All Things Considered. Favorite book? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- and after the jump we've compiled two top-10 lists. Did any items on the list surprise you?

-- Eyder Peralta

Continue reading "'Blade Runner' And The Beatles Define The NPR Community" >

When we launched the API back in July, we had some ideas as to how to gauge success from a metrics perspective. Some of those success measures were around adoption by member stations, others we based on total number of registrants, and others were based on number of requests. That said, having one of the first comprehensive content APIs, it was hard to determine what the actual numbers meant. In our first few weeks, we had over 300 registrants. Was that good? We think so, but it is hard to know. We know that many of those registrants were member stations, many were developers in the public, and some percentage were people who registered simply to take a look at what they just read about in an article somewhere. After one month, we exceeded 1,000,000 requests to the API itself. We were pretty confident that number was a good one, but again, we had no real basis of comparison.

Despite the challenges in figuring out what our numbers mean, we do believe that our usage and registration numbers (published most recently two weeks ago in my last post) are a strong indication of success for the API.

Another challenge is how to actually get our metrics. While our goal is to encourage the re-use of our content, we obviously want some way to measure success. There are several key ways that we have baked into the system to allow us to see how the API is being used. Keep in mind that there is no 100% way to know how many eyes are seeing the content, only how people are implementing it, and in some cases, on which websites, blogs or applications people are seeing the content that came from the API. The primary methods are as follows:

* Since all audio must be served from NPR servers (based on our Terms of Use), we are able to tag the audio accordingly, indicating that the request originated from the API.

* All requests to the API require an access key. This helps us identify trends in usage of the API at the key level, in addition to at much higher levels.

* For each request in the system, we will be outputting a log to our servers that includes the request, the API key used in the request, and the stories/assets that were returned. Over time, we will be able to see trends of use, most popular requests, most commonly distributed stories, etc.

* For any rich-content request to the API (ie. text elements that contain HTML), we have included a 1x1 pixel image that is served from NPR servers (which is an industry standard approach for capturing metrics online) and passes information back to our logs. This will help us identify some of the places where NPR content is appearing when it has been cached by the website, blog or application.

Like I said, this is not the complete picture, but these approaches result in metrics that do give us a good indication as to how the API is getting used and by whom. With that in mind, these numbers only have weight if they translate into real-world consumption of the content. In my next post I will highlight some of the more interesting implementations and usages that we have heard about in the marketplace.
-- Daniel Jacobson

A few weeks ago I did a Web chat on whether the government should bail out the Detroit auto business. That 35-minute exercise continues to pay dividends to our listeners on the air. NPR has one of the smartest audiences in America. But, until now, I didn't appreciate what an extraordinary resource they are for reporters like me.

Not only was the chat interesting, but we got over 100 comments. Many of the comments were from people who either had connections to the auto business or actually worked in the industry. (Nothing like talking to people who actually know what you're trying to report on.) :-) So after we did the Web chat, I began contacting some of the people who had commented.

Within a day, I was able to put together a radio story entirely based on sources from the Web chat. These were terrific sources with lots of knowledge whom I would have never been able to find by old reporting methods, like calling around. I also read some of the comments on All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation.

Now, I'm moving on to a story about car dealerships. One of the people who commented on the Web chat runs an advertising company whose clients include hundreds of dealerships. He's putting me in touch with some of his clients, some of whom, I imagine, will also soon be on the air.

In short, the Web chat has been a great way to find new sources and also get in touch with the people who ultimately support our work: the listeners.

-- Frank Langfitt, NPR Labor/Workplace Correspondent

Since we launched the NPR Community, we've had more than 27,000 comments posted. The good thing is that the social media desk (made up of myself, Wright Bryan and Andy Carvin) has blocked only a tiny fraction of those.

For the most part, we've been happy with the conversation you all have created; we've learned a lot in the past couple of months, from how a community polices itself to more ordinary things like useful links and amazingly human tales about the toll of war.

Terrell Spencer's comment on Ivan Watson's story about a tumultuous marriage between an Iraqi woman an American serviceman was especially poignant.

He wrote:

I'm an Iraq War vet, and I've recently come out of PTSD. Fallujah was a hell hole. You can't live/fight there and it not mess you up. I'm a loving husband and father, I consider it my duty to sacrifice for my family. I love and respect critters, but 8 months ago I snapped at the world's loyalest dog for not coming. I beat her, pummeling her with my fists, screaming while choking her, then threw her off the porch. I was completely out of control. I never hit my wife, but I shamefully created a home where she and my son lived on edge. I'm better now, I've dealt with what happened over there. Why am I spilling all this? Because these people need help. They're hurt and messed up. These people are ashamed, and hurting. They should be rebuilt - not abandoned and condemned.

The comment was left amidst a hostile conversation. The gist of it is that, after struggling economically, the Iraqi woman in the story had turned to stripping to support her family in the United States. A lot of the comments were disconcerting in their judgment.

One of the mild ones came from Jan Shields, who wrote, "Where is the dignity and discipline that we associate with our veterans of war? Shameful. shameful, shameful!"

A couple of producers asked that the comment thread be closed for the story and we considered that seriously, but, then, out of the steam of the conversation emerged Spencer's earnest plea.

Part of the reason we launched community tools on the site was to open NPR to the outside but another big reason was that we thought the wisdom of the many would better inform the stories on NPR.

To see so little empathy given to such a human, flawed family was, to be honest, disheartening. Part of my greatest hope for a community like this is that we go back and forth civilly on a diversity of opinions and come to find some understanding.

But I guess the lesson learned with Spencer's comment is that sometimes to come to that understanding, we need a little tousling, that sometimes out of dissonance emerges harmony.

Next Time: A lighter fare: We look at the NPR Community's top favorites.
The Time After Next: We consider two new discussion rules.

-- Eyder Peralta

It has been several weeks since my last post on the goals and challenges of launching NPR's API. I still intend to fill out the story in the coming weeks/months.

I will start up again by talking about my recent presentation at Mashery's API Conference last week. The conference itself was primarily focused on the business of APIs. In my presentation, I mainly discussed NPR's goals for opening up an API along with some of the challenges we faced leading up to the launch.

As NPR reviewed the landscape of content syndication, we found that there were quite a few APIs already in the marketplace. Most of them, however, belong to content aggregators (eg. Google, Yahoo!, etc.), user-generated content sites (eg. Flickr, Wikipedia, etc.), and some e-commerce sites (eg. eBay, Amazon, etc.). There were surprisingly few comprehensive APIs from major media organizations. Some organizations, like DayLife, CBS and BBC, offered APIs, but these limited in a variety of ways.

Mostly, these major media organizations were syndicating their content through RSS or extended RSS, such as Podcasts or MediaRSS. This approach has been surprisingly effective - what I call "Really Successful Syndication". It is successful because RSS is simple, widely adopted in the marketplace, and succeeds in driving traffic back to the site. The major problems with RSS are the same things that make it really successful. That is, in the current marketplace, RSS now stands for "Really Stingy Syndication" because it does not contain very much real content. Instead, it provides enough content to drive traffic back to the source, embracing the "lock-down" model of content.

The marketplace is changing dramatically, though, and people have destinations to which they are attached. They go to Facebook, MySpace, etc. and expect to find content there. Content providers will have to put their content on these sites through widgets and other means of distribution. If the users of Facebook, for example, find the content they want on Facebook, then they are less likely to leave Facebook to get more content (unless the user has a keen interest in a specific content provider). As a result, the richer the content is on Facebook, the more likely the user identifies your brand as a trusted news source. So, RSS is ok only if no other providers offer richer content. But it is only a matter of time before the richer content is there...

Because of these changes in the marketplace, NPR decided to release a comprehensive API of all of our content that we have rights to redistribute. If our content is truly open, it will enable users to mash it up, keep it relevant to them, and share it with new audiences in places where those people are. Although NPR.org is still critical to our strategy, we can no longer rely exclusively on the site as a way to reach people.

There were two other major factors in our decision. First, it is critically important for NPR to provide content and services to our Member stations. The API will enable stations to get NPR content on their sites. We also plan to offer local station content through the API, which will provide a local/national view of content to the users. The second major influence in our decision was NPR's Mission to "create a more informed public". By offering both local and national content in our API, enabling users to mash it up and use it in ways that we have not thought of or don't have the resources to execute, we hope to reach and inform new audiences.

Once we decided to release an API, there were several questions that we needed to answer. First and foremost, we needed to establish what our target audiences for the API would be. They are as follows:

• End-users and other web developers (These users can post content to blogs as well as create innovative ways of using NPR content)
• NPR's Digital Media team (NPR Product and Project Managers can improve their products using the API without a lot of effort from NPR Developers)
• NPR Member Stations
• Content aggregators and NPR's business partners

Serving each of these audiences through the API enables us to seamlessly integrate with them in such a way that it requires very little involvement from NPR's development staff.

In the slides (attached below) from the conference, I have provided some examples of how these audiences are using the API.

We will be discussing more of our challenges in later posts.
-- Daniel Jacobson

While we have been pretty busy building tools for our Election Night reporting, we continue working on the API. The feedback so far has been fantastic. Along with encouragement and congratulations we have received lots great suggestions. We have been very excited by the adoption of this technology and the general embracing of this "Brand and Release" strategy. We hope to have some significant and exciting new features in place by early next year.

But what if you want to hear more...?

Well if you missed us present at OSCON 08 there will be other opportunities to hear us first hand discuss what we have done, and where we are going with the API.

Here are several of the upcoming events we plan to be at:

Today (11/03) at 5:15pm PST Daniel Jacobson will be discussing our efforts on the API at The Business of APIs Conference. If you are attending please stop by.

For those in the Public Broadcasting family, we will be at IMA Public Media 09 in Atlanta Feb 19-21. This is definitely a must attend for those in public broadcasting who see their future world meshing traditional and new media experiences.

We are also very excited to be a finalist for the We Media Game changer award. Out of 150 Nominees we are one of 35 finalist. Additionally we could be chosen as keynote speaker based on community votes.

And, finally we recently got the word from the folks at O'Reilly that we have been invited to present at the Web 2.0 Expo Mar 31st-Apr. 3rd.

Hope to see you soon.

-- Zach Brand