this week on "press: here" high-tech companies profit from encouraging others to develop products. just like your mother told you, it's good to share. and the man who knows as much about the financial crisis as the president but does a better job explaining it. planet money's alex bloomberg. our reporters from "usa today" jon schwartz and sarah lacy of techcrunch this week on "press: here." >> good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. it may sound counterintuitive but one of the best ways to succeed in high-tech is to share your company's secrets and help

other organizations stand on your shoulders. put another way -- first developers, developers, developers, developers. >> reporter: this is microsoft's steve ballmer some years ago making a spectacle of himself while also making an important point. >> yes. >> reporter: third party developers are key to the success of many high-tech companies. the apple iphone is more than a pretty telephone because it's also a platform for tens of thousands of apps created by outside developers. facebook encouraged the use of its software, what programmers call its a.p.i. by third parties that led to the success of the company of zynga, maker of games found on facebook. i-5 a small manufacturer of memory chips that can turn any come ra into a wi-fi-enabled camera jus opened up its a.p.i. to developers.

already successful company with a very clever product helps its outside relationship with parties will help it grow. is president and ceo of i-5. he has nearly 20 years in consumer electronics including at logitech and hewlett-packard. jon schwartz of "usa today." you have this cool product and let me say to the viewer, love it. >> glad hear it. >> and you decide, i need other people on get involved in it. why? why go to developers? >> i think the first thing as we heard from mr. ballmer you need a platform for developers to develop on, right. >> you need to be a little bit sweatier when you say that. >> jump around some. so the first thing we need to understand is that we're a platform. i think what consumers see is a really cool gadget but the magic of that gadget is it's actually connecting through the internet, through a platform and that's

where the magic happens. that's where we can do nifty things like geotagging. what we realized as the a small start-up company we have do things that matter most. from vertical markets, specialists all kinds of neat ideas that -- >> we wish you would. >> we wish you would and that list was getting longer and longer. but some of it is great ideas that we need to empower somebody else to go and develop for. >> also an era where you need build on top of your application because there's so much realtime feedback from consumers and that's what zynga does. browsers like mozilla so in a sense you can't do it all yourself. you need someone to help you fill in some of those blanks. >> yeah i don't think that none of us should make the mistake that we're the only geniuses in our business, right, and we need to take advantage of that. lots of good ideas out there and we need keep our geniuses with what is core to us so this is

all about bringing all of those creative ideas that are out there, creating more interesting way do with an i-5 card, vertical markets, specialty stuff, addressing new devices that we wouldn't address. >> and it's also about speed making those kingly. >> the tweeters, and the flickrs and fill in the blank. and in that meantime you have the hot new thing. >> right. >> but i mean silicon valley things seem to go in a pendulum shift. the last two years, and now everyone wants to be social commerce because group on has built this amazing thing. think similar of the platform disease. facebook opened up its platform and suddenly everyone wanted to be a platform. >> the market capital. >> yeah, some of them did. a couple did but a ton of platform companies that just

don't go anywhere. we could open up techcrunch and say design your own blog from techcrunch. even though we have 10 million monthly uniques. >> it's hard to argue that platform is one of the buzz words du jour sometimes good reasons and playing buzz word bingo. in this chase grew out the incoming sort of request and feedback that we were getting. i think for us what's core about having a platform strategy is we still have a product, we still have a development purpose and a product that people want to buy that has really -- this independent of a platform and so the platform is really about extending that coursing that we're working on to other people who want to do new things with it and we wouldn't make ourself. >> you make that argument open up your platform your a.p.i.s people do things to it that nobody saw coming. the gps devices they started to

use it for geocaching where you go hunt berry treasure. had never thought of this. a game that nobody had come up. >> and this goes beyond start-ups. i think of ebay for example and this will sound crazy. one of the smartest things they did was build the paypal to build on top of it and stagnant at top of that company -- >> the logic makes total sense. what i oner about is when everyone's a platform it's a little bit too good to be true to expect all of these great developers will come on your system. we talk a lot now in silicon valley. twitter, facebook, google, zynga, all of these hiring great developers. when everyone has an easy-to-build platform and these gaudy reach numbers, how do you guys get the really great developers to design for your platform. >> yeah, well i guess part of the proof is our developer's going to sign up for our

program. if we build it will they come. we've got more than 400 who have signed up so far to develop our system so are they going to come, yes. i think one of the bing things about platforms though particularly open ones is now we can get people who, maybe they have a great job, zynga, something else but they're really into digital photography. opening up the platform, we don't have to have a whole industry of full-time developers. this could be side passion projects for somebody just just got a really, really great idea. a good example, a guy who really wanted to be able to get photos from an iphone camera to a camera into an ipad so he developed his own application for the ipad do that, right. >> and it makes it the wi-fi that much better. david poe called your device a huge leap forward, which is no small compliment especially from david poe so we were talking earlier the device, not everyone's heard of it, though i

think it is marvelous and so i can't make those balance in my own head. you stick in any camera and it becomes a wi-fi camera and never hook up to the -- >> we are. we just launched in front of target and walmart. we've been at best buy for a long time and i think that when you're on start-up on start-up budgets it takes a way to penetrate the consumer psyche. >> you only have a couple of seconds to say this is a much more expensive digital camera than that one over there but it does so much more. >> i think early on there was a bit of that. we heard what consumers need to do to get interested into this. what's the fundamental thing that gets you interested? we don't need to explain the lot more at beginning. so we discovered that this automatic backup and organizing of your precious memories is sort of the core things. this notion of just get it out of my camera while those

pictures are still fresh and relevant, automatically i don't have to lift a finger. start with that core, core premise and once the consumer gets interested they'll realize the other wonderful things it has. i think from the very, very beginning had this principle that, the richest user experience is not necessarily the one that let's you do the most. it's the one that requires you to do the least. >> right. >> so you start off with this experience that can be as effortless and as automatic as you want it to be and if you're the kind of person who really wants to get into the technology, exercise filters, do a lot of stuff, we provide those capabilities too but sort of optional as opposed to essential. >> ask you one question as you have developers come in what's your quality -- how do you assure that i don't feel negatively about i5 because the dumb thing doesn't work. >> yeah and i think that it's really, really important and

difficult to handle this. apple has difficulty doing this. >> right and it works. >> you're in the house. >> yeah, yeah. >> versus okay here is something experimental that's out there. >> the halo effect of a great app without getting the negative as well. >> right so part of that is our responsibility and think that is what we make accessible. the apis that we reveal and what we let developers do it has to be a relatively sand box so they don't get too far -- >> so many applications being developed a lot are probably crap too. >> i gave you some time and you said crap. >> they're not very good. i know i'm so, so leading edge. but anyway there's that problem and quandary is that there are too many applications and there might be too many, too much noise, too much crap.

>> a quick response an then we have to go to break. >> yeah i think for us the key is what we allow developers to do has to be well defined so i we don't give them too much rope. >> jeff is the ceo of i5. up next one of the smartest guys in the financial world is not a banker or a treasury official but a radio reporter. alex bloomberg of planet money up next on "press: here."

welcome back to "press: here." for all of the complexity of the financial crisis, the credit default swaps, the toxic assets, the bad banks, a surprising number of people understand exactly what went wrong, not

because they studied economics but because they listened to a radio show. >> okay, so i gels the first thing we have to do is talk about the global pull of money, right? >> right. the global pool of money, that's where our story begins. >> reporter: the radio program this american life and its episode "giant pool of money," is not just one of the best explanations of the financial crisis, it's one of the best explanations of anything ever. >> it's hard. >> right. >> i mean, you know, like -- >> reporter: national public radio reporters alex bloomberg and adam davidson seen here on "meet the press," have done more to shed light on what happened than any president, any treasury secretary could have ever hoped to. and their efforts don't stop there. the radio report was so popular it spun its own podcast called "planet money." >> welcome to "planet money" i'm alex bloomberg.

>> today is december 3rd. on the program today how you, yes you dear planet money listener could be funding the bailout of ireland. >> reporter: and now several times a week millions of americans listen with wrapped attention to what should be arcane and indecipherable. don't just explain toxic assets the reporters actually bought a toxic asset. a mortgage-backed security, they nicknamed it toxi. alex bloomberg has won the george polk award for "the giant pool of money" producer of this american life and executive producer of this american life two seasons of television shows and our interview with alex in two ax, i always wanted to do that. and then we'll have a commercial and then two. i was wondering if i would get a

laugh. one of the things that you ask in your radio report and i will quote, why are they lending people to people who can't afford to pay it back. >> well, yes that -- >> i know, right? >> yeah. >> and that turned out to be an incredibly complex question. >> yeah. it did. i mean that became -- that became the core of the "giant pool of money," the first big radio piece that we did on this topic. >> and i will not ask you to explain the financial crisis. >> thank you. >> in the limited time available there is a perfect podcast that will explain it to you. what in the world made you think that you could? >> well, i wasn't sure that i could. it was something they sort of became obsessed with. taken grew -- for me, it grew out of -- just everybody i knew was in so much debt. student debt, credit card debt, i just knew all of these people, and this was early -- this was in 2005, 2006, in the bubble years. and i was just looking at -- and i thought, this is -- something crazy is going on. how are all of these people going to be able to pay all of this debt back and then once you

go beyond consumer credit cards and loans into mortgage debt, then it was just -- it was just a massive amount of debt and that's what really got me thinking about it, it was my own sort of personal obsession with it. >> because you do the -- so many outlets and media including "usa today" and others, we don't have the time or the resources. how much time did you spend digging into this and kind of unfurling the whole complex situation. >> well, it was -- that's something that we have -- definitely, the lurksry on this american life and part of the thing -- i think one of the reasons that we were so successful is exactly what you're pointing to. we just had time, not necessarily time -- we the devoting time to devote to the research but real estate on the radio. it took an hour to explain this. it started out as an hour and a half and that was edited it down. i don't know if you could have done it in less time than that. >> what's interesting about this is it goes so counter toward the pressure that we're see in the media driven you know by the

web, by this sort of instant gratification. quick clip, you know, ipad/iphone culture. we fight at techcrunch so much if we do a video that's more than five minutes long people drop off immediately. if we do a post too much people drop off, about angry birds it'll get a million more time click than anything like enterprised software. how do you guys fight off all of those things and still have the level of success that you have. >> i think literally it's the expectations that come with the median and i think that expectation, for better or worse, for an internet video is short, quick, to the point, you know? >> uh-huh. >> and at now at planet money we're trying to do internet videos and fight for us. >> i'm sorry, go ahead. let me followup to that question and that is in all of the ways that you could explain something complex, radio to me is the worst way to do it. because newspaper i can show you a graph. television i can put the words on a screen, blogs, et cetera. radio, you have to say now stick

with me on this. 59% of the 32% of the 17 defaulted or what have you. >> right and you'll notice we never said numbers. >> yeah. >> we say really big, it's most we'll say hundreds of millions or hundreds of billions or something like that, i mean we name a number but -- that is absolutely true, we struggle with that in radio all of the time. the one thing it does have going for it it's the best median i think for telling a story. so if you can turn your numbers into a story and with the beginning point and then an end point and you know characters along the way and little epiphanys along the way i think that it's your enemy. >> supplement what you're reporting or saying on radio, you can reference that or maybe use a multimedia approach. i'm starting to think that more and -- as we're moving forward. might be going online to try to defend on the patience of the

reader and give them different lengths, different types of story. seven versions of the story conceivab conceivably. >> and what we're doing at giant money. between adam davidson and i and this american life and it's grown into sort of a joint venture because npr and planet money and it's a tweak weekly pod cast but that's what we do op radio stories and on american life. what we do a lot, a shorter radio version and then if you really want the -- the version you can download on the pod cast. we do call-outs to people. if you've been involved on this, leave comments on our website and facebook and it's been really successful and it also helps build rapport with the audience. people like to participate and people are participating. >> can you tell us what your audiences are? i mean sarah has mentioned her a couple of times. >> i'm very proud of those, scott. >> the audience -- you know i

should have -- i never remember. >> ballpark figure. >> i think it's 23 million listeners to npr. >> yeah i'm sure, yeah. >> on our pod cast think that it's like a million a month or a couple million a month now i can't remember but it's doing okay for a pod cast. i think it's over 100,000, 120,000. >> hold that question for a commercial break and when we come back with alex bloomberg and the rest in just a minute. our points from chase sapphire preferred are worth 25% more on travel. we're like forget florida, we're going on a safari. so we're on the serengeti, and seth finds a really big bone. we're talking huge. they dig it up, put it in the natural history museum and we get to name it. sethasauraus. really. your points from chase sapphire preferred are worth 25% more on travel? means better vacations. that's incredible. believe it...with chase sapphire preferred your points are worth 25% more on travel when booked through ultimate rewards.

welcome back to "press: here." we're talking with alex bloom berk of "planet money" and "this american life." sarah, go ahead. >> it's interesting just before the break. throwing out user numbers, you don't even know yours. that's such a different -- in the kind of journalism that you can do the do at npr and the rest the world the internet has forced us into this constant

measuring and obsessive with measurements that i think it's damaging the journalism. i wish that i didn't know my numbers so well. do you think that's a luxury that you have in radio, in pr or a luxury? >> because they're listening into the car and whatnot. >> the somebodiness our numbers better than i do. so definitely people are paying attention and the numbers for public radio have been going consistently up and so in a certain way, i feel like we -- we have this different in that we have radio public support. but it's true. that is a real buffer because we have, you know, we have corporate underwriting and that's where a lot of our money comes from, with where a lot of money for "planet money" comes from. sponsors for the radio parts and we're actually revenue ready. >> and the pod cast. but we're talking earlier if i went to my boss and said, i would like to have a podcast in

which to pay out a lot of money to send out this data stream and it would be essentially unsponsored and lots of people would listen in and i wouldn't control to the air time at all, i know what they'd say. so in a way if i'm not -- if i'm listening to "planet money" on a podcast i'm not listening to npr. i'm not listening -- you know what i mean. >> well -- >> you're competing against yourself. >> i would definitely put it differently. >> you don't speak for npr but throwing that out there. >> i think what podcast represent is the future of. >> i do, too. >> and i think that absolutely, you are listening to npr and you'll be listening to more of npr. i have a whole thing about podcast. and i think that podcast are going to be huge. >> i think we all do, yeah. >> podcast shockingly have not been huge. i mean a lot of companies started. >> "this american life" when is the last time that you listened to "this american life" on the

radio. >> i actually do. >> do you really. >> on the podcast has been phenomenal nal. when we first talked about it was talking about it only 20,000 people and now i think it's almost like 750,000. >> but is there going to be big businesses that come out of it or just kind of like blogging where it, you know, and you have kind of a lot and a lot of leakage from it and fragmented or can people build big franchises because that so far hasn't happened. >> that hasn't happened and i don't know i feel like it has to be way more accepted right now. right now you can go big franchise over radio because there are million of passive listeners in the radio. >> this is deeper, richer experience though, supplement it as a podcast and in a sense maybe there are certain people who are predetermined, predefined to actually follow something like that versus radio and more passive and more active on the podcast side. >> how much more common will that be. >> as we move into an on-demand

world, if i listen to something on the radio and i'm like, oh, i can't rewind it. >> i may be the geek at the table but i listen to podcasts in my car. it comes through the blackberry out through the bluetooth and i listen to -- oh good it's new "planet money." ask you about this new form of journalism. you want to talk about toxic assets so you talk about -- you get deeply involved. >> no they're getting their tails handed to them. >> a bad week. >> don't tell your investment. >> yeah, don't do what we do. well, i feel like -- it's a trick. i mean it's not. we weren't the first person. michael polan a great journalist that i admire. we're following in other people's footsteps but for us it's simply -- it's so hard to find people to identify with in

these stories. they're so abstract that are there people, they're often bond traders god love them they're not the most interesting people to talk about in the world and what we need to do is define the character and sometimes we have to be the character. helps people understand the story line. >> in a sense buy bying the toxic asset you own the story literally. sarah and i if we want to go into a shareholder's meeting we have to buy a share. you can basically do what you went the subject. >> and recovering a need like toxic assets like this huge story. gigantic funds of money, essentially lent money through homeowners in florida and california. and the two sides never met. never met each the. we're trying to draw between those but we can't find the homeowners who originally bought this is bond and so by buying it ourselves in the secondary market you know, it actually enabled us to track down some of the actual people. >> and in the stories -- we

don't have much time left, you can't tell them but the stories were fascinating. it was a criminal. a retired couple or a house flipper and you were able to tell their are. >> yeah mortgage fraud in our toxic asset, a guy walking away with toxic asset. heartbreak, loss. >> you'll laugh and you'll cry and everything else. alex bloomberg is host of "planet money," producer for "this american life" as well. we'll be back in just a moment. last minute... on christmas. and sitting next to us, chevy chase. and we really hit it off. we play golf, and then the luau. he's like da vinci with ice. and after, we help hang christmas decorations. wait, wait, wait. you flew last minute... on christmas... with points from chase sapphire? yeah. amazing. believe it. with points from chase sapphire, you can book airline tickets with no blackout dates or restrictions.

my thanks to my gest r guests ceo of i5. alex bloomberg to "planet money" and "this american life." press here tv.com. i'm scott mccrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.