AP Metadata Service may be out of reach for bloggers

Photo of AP building -  Alterego, GNU Free Documentation License.

Ever wonder why all three major television networks carry the same information on their newscasts? Could be because they are getting all their news from The Associated Press (AP), and this will probably become even more prevalent with the implementation of Metadata Services.

Knowledge is power, and that is why fast access to informational content is key! 
If you've got the money, you can disseminate any information anywhere in any format, and that is just what the AP is proving with its new service.

“AP Metadata Services offers publishers tools to get customers the right content at the right time,” said Amy Sweigert, AP vice president of information management. “It provides a standard news taxonomy that can enable new business opportunities across the industry, and it allows publishers to benefit from the ongoing investment AP is making in the service."

In an email response from Sweigert, she mentioned, "This offering is a B2B service targeted at other publishers. We provide ongoing maintenance of the service to keep it up to date. The service has an annual license fee, tied to the volume of content being submitted for tagging.

"When we were looking for this type of service 6 years ago, we couldn’t find something to meet our needs, and decided to build instead -- so we know the costs involved in developing a system like this. As a result, we’ve introduced a SaaS offering that is highly affordable as compared to building something from scratch," Sweigert said.

I contacted Paul Colford, director of media relations at the AP, and asked him how bloggers would be able to access this service and the costs associated with it.  "I don't know the answer to that, but I will get you in touch with the people who make those business arrangements," he said.

Initially created to help AP compete in the digital marketplace, Metadata Services has evolved into a unique product offering based on Semantic Web standards. It combines the acumen of human intelligence with automation, allowing the service to process large volumes of content quickly and efficiently, according to the company's press release.

According to Wikipedia, Metadata (metacontent) is traditionally found in the card catalogs and libraries and is used to describe digital data using metadata standards specific to a particular discipline whereby the quality of the original data/files is greatly increased. For example, a webpage may include metadata specifying what language it's written in, what tools were used to create it, and where to go for more on the subject, allowing browsers to automatically improve the experience of users.

AP is now making this battle-tested software-as-a-service available to other publishers, allowing them to leverage AP’s expertise and experience.

AP Headquarters in New York City - Americasroof -  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information.

©2012 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.