UK’s The Guardian is taking the
Google approach to digital applications with the launch of its Open
Platform feature, which it hopes will complement the paper’s revenue stream.

The Guardian, which recently ruled our erecting a paywall, also announced a membership club, similar to the Times+ initiative, that will offer members discounts on live debates, films, festivals and performances.

Initial Open Platform projects include “Enjoy England“, an interactive map for visitors, and “Voter Power“, which promotes the case for electoral reform.

Editorsweblog reports:

“Open Platform offers a range of services for developing digital products and applications with the Guardian. The newspaper allows application developers to reach and engage audiences to develop advertising campaigns with the software. Recently, Open Platform powered the Enjoy England campaign with a series of interactive maps.”

The Guardian lists Open Platform’s key features:

• Articles published daily and an archive going as far back as 1999. There are more than 1,000,000 articles available.

• A range of media resources including pictures, video, podcasts and the Guardian’s editorially curated tag database.

• A database of political information including MPs, constituencies, and election results.

• Free-to-use spreadsheets and data curated by the Guardian news editors, and a search engine for finding open data published by governments around the world.

• A framework for offering content, data, tools and rich user experiences developed by our commercial partners directly into sidebar components and full pages on guardian.co.uk.