What is it that Google doesn’t do online? Search, ads, trends, analytics, news…. name them. The search giant does them all. When it comes to online media, Google stands up there. With online channels being the most popular way of breaking news, following up on news and monitoring reaction to recent happenings, what if somebody employed the services of the most powerful API search and analytics algorithms on the planet, rolled them up together and neatly presented them to our journalists and reporters to make their work even easier? That’s Google Media Tools for you. I fondly refer to it as GMT after the most significant timeline on the planet and it is bound to be significant on its own too.
GMT is what you can refer to as a media resource centre. Not in the sense of a repository where everything is gobbled up and one simply has to pop in, grab and leave, but in the sense that it empowers the journalist or media personality to come, access all the resources and tools available and use them to get the sort of information they want. We have seen Facebook take this direction by opening up its well guarded APIs to include a Public Feed API and a Keyword Insights API targeting news agencies so that they can easily skim through postings on the social media platform and easily monitor trends, reactions and moods that breaking news, developing stories and the like bring giving them a huge data trove that makes informed reporting even much easier. For the more tech savvy, they can use Google’s App Engine to create apps that tie in with the resources Google is offering to provide more in-depth coverage to their audiences. GMT also serves as an educative platform for today’s digitally connected journalist with services like Google+ Hangouts on Air which a good number of media houses have been using being given prominence which could see them almost become an industry standard.
If you’re a journalist or just someone in media circles who’s interested in seeing what Google is bringing to your table or newsroom, check out GMT.
Google is promising that more resources are coming to this new hub.
What’s in it for Google? Are they just providing a platform? Of course there’s something at the end of the day. While they’re just using their deep understand of internet users and their trends, it is also showing the likes of Facebook and Twitter which have grown tremendously as sources of news who is really the boss of them all. Also, it gets to accumulate more data in its data centres that can help it accurately serve up well-targeted ads serve its users and the world well.
