Skip to main content

APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Co...

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

Rank

Groups (1)

  • Web2

    Web2.0

    470 members,908 bookmarks

    discuss everything about Web2.0

Bookmark History

Saved by 11 people (4 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-03-04


Public Sticky notes

APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / March 3, 2008 12:41 PM / 8 Comments

Should your company offer an API for outside developers to build on? Should you engage in one of the fast growing developer platforms or with another company's API? There's a world of options opening up to leverage cross-site functionality and data exchange, but there are also some serious questions to ask about this emerging paradigm. [img: Flickr Mashups by David Wilkinson]

Highlighted by plinan

The technology press and enthusiastic geeks are thrilled whenever a new API is announced

Highlighted by wade

Offering an API is a great way to make developer friends and developing for a large Platform has the potential to bring your work to a huge audience.

Highlighted by plinan

"Google Maps and Twitter are examples of great services with documented APIs which encouraged developers to use them," Al Hakim said. "That contributed in turn to attracting more users and increasing these services' popularity through organic growth."

Highlighted by plinan

there has to be a win in terms of time savings or product capability in order for the investment of time to be worthwhile.

Highlighted by plinan

This kind of development can extend your own applications with relatively little of the work being done in-house and can give you access to whole new markets.

Highlighted by plinan

Schindler summarizes the downsides as all-too-often poor documentation and a risky degree of reliance on another vendor's product or service.

Highlighted by wade

downsides as all-too-often poor documentation and a risky degree of reliance on another vendor's product or service

Highlighted by plinan

Developer networks may," he pointed out, "divert developers from building higher value, higher utility a-class apps on the ultimate platform.

Highlighted by plinan

Will Anyone Come

Highlighted by plinan

You need the infrastructure, community and technical support around it. [For developers] the API has to do something you want, easier or better than you could it yourself, or bring some other benefits on the side.

Highlighted by plinan

if the network has no users, then it will have no developers...the reason dev platforms attract developers is because of their promise of distribution.

Highlighted by plinan

if your platform doesn't have a large number of users then it had "better have a real good growth plan to sell," and some very cool potential apps, if you want him as a developer to spend resources growing dependent on your success.

Highlighted by hexybaby

if your platform doesn't have a large number of users then it had "better have a real good growth plan to sell," and some very cool potential apps

Highlighted by plinan

I think the reason myself (and others around me) chose to develop with an API is simply a time-to-release issue. It's simply faster to grab somebody else's event data they've collected or tags used to describe an artist [for McKnight's PodBop, for example]. Why reinvent the wheel when there are wheels available for the taking? Now this may often correlate with API providers having huge networks of users but that is not required. They may have just done most of the data gathering themselves.

Highlighted by plinan

We want to open APIs because we think we have value to add and people can add value to us, it has nothing to do with number of users. It's about confidence in the value that you add and its ability to attract developers

Highlighted by plinan

"Bottom line - if you start a biz dev initiative, API or otherwise, you need to do it right. Communication. Documentation. A path to success., so if you build something great it will scale and you can benefit from it. Support. Something worth using/building on. If you have these things, it's a great idea, and it will work. If you don't, it's a lousy idea, and the fact that it is an API won't save it.

Highlighted by plinan

an open, standards-based API allows companies to build, deploy and manage partnerships easily and economically

Highlighted by plinan

The API is the frictionless means for any two web-based services to interact and share data and capabilities."

Highlighted by plinan

Some of the first concerns that comes up when an API is suggested are that it could take more time to support than it's worth and that, secretly perhaps, companies are wary of inviting outside developers into a messy code base they are embarrassed about.

Highlighted by wade

an API is going to enforce structure on your code and open up internal opportunities

Highlighted by plinan

a lot of possibilities open up if you can "build your own product on your own API."

Highlighted by plinan

pointed out that "developer APIs to websites are almost always unusable or slower than building your own web scraper for that site."

Highlighted by wade

emphasized the importance of standards, a theme that runs through the thoughts of many of the biggest API advocates above. "From a developers point of view," he told me, "I find data portability more interesting than mashups."

Highlighted by plinan

The web of the near-term future isn't about pages any more. It's about data, flying around, hopefully under the control of users, and offering a world of possibilities that few of us could have imagined just a few years ago.

Highlighted by plinan

Video

"How to Make Developers Love Your API" a very good presentation by Dave McClure, former key player at the PayPal developer program. McClure gave this talk at last year's Business of APIs Conference.

Highlighted by plinan