Design Your API
Learnings From Twitter + Stamen

Basics
We don’t need to define what an API is at this point...

http://twitter.com/users/show/al3x.json
...but it’s worth explaining where APIs have ended up. This is an example from the API I
maintain at Twitter. Can anyone guess what it does?

(It’s basically all about REST)
Most providers have decided on REST. Google abandoned SOAP. XML-RPC is gradually being
abandoned. This makes a conversation about APIs much simpler.

Provider
I’m coming from the perspective of developing, maintaining, and providing an API.

The Twitter API
‣ Comprises most of Twitter’s web traffic.
‣ ~1600 developers in our Google Group.
‣ ~400 applications we credit, tons more o