Guardian offers its content free to publishers & bloggers – A sign of things to come!

Rupert Murdoch had raised lot of eyebrows last year when he announced scathing attack on Google for using his site’s content free of cost and had vowed that he would block Google from accessing his sites.

In an exact opposite, Guardian, one of the leading online portal / daily in U.K has gone completely open and has allowed free syndicating rights to every publisher and blogger. Not only has Guardian made its content free, it has offered tools and APIs where publishers can find and publish content of their choice.

Murdoch, on the other hand, who heads News Corporation, which owns The Times and The Sun newspapers in Britain (competitors of Gaurdian) had said that he will lead the media Industry to have a paid model.

The paid route model may be quite logical in other sectors, but on internet, dynamics are different. With rise of blogging & Social Media, most often than not breaking news is published on sites other than mainstream media. No one is going miss them if they do not offer content free of cost.

Guardian has definitely taken the step in right direction – They are freely allowing their content to travel to various other websites and blogs. In return they ask for a single 300 X 250 ad block and attribution. They are even offering tools like readymade wordpress plugins and API’s that allow wordpress based bloggers to publish their content with ease.

Guardian WordPress Plugin

 

This allows Guardian to make money not only from their website, but also from potentially thousands of publishers who will syndicate their content. Additionally, due to attributions, they will automatically rise on search rankings.

This move by Guardian can potentially be seen as a path breaking one for online mainstream media and news syndication sites. We will have to wait and watch to see how others react to this development. I think many online media sites will join suite…What say ? your opinion ?