Open APIs and the Semantic Web 2011

Open APIs & the Semantic Web: State of the Market John Musser, ProgrammableWeb @johnmusser SemTech 2011

Introduction
ProgrammableWeb.com
API & mashup directory
News, community, dev tools
3,300 Web APIs
5,800 mashups

Open APIs: State of the Market
The big picture
The business of open APIs
Design and technology
Trends

Open APIs: Why bother?
Make money
60% of all listings on eBay.com added via their APIs
Save money
SmugMug saves > $500K/year with Amazon S3 Storage
Build brand
Google Maps 300% growth vs 20% MapQuest
Move to the cloud
Over 50% of all transactions via their API
Go anywhere
Netflix now available on over 200 devices

Open APIs: Growth is accelerating Total APIs over time

APIs: some very competitive markets Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011 Number of APIs, Top 15 Categories

Semantic APIs on the open web

Where’s the semantic web in here? Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011

The big picture
Trends

What makes an open API successful?
The underlying service
Or, a good API on a bad service is lipstick on a pig
A plan and a business model
Simple, open, easily adopted
Providing choices
Good developer support

API business models Best practice: Bake your business model into your API Who What How Amazon Associates Retail Affiliate Model Amazon S3 Infrastructure Pay-as-you-go eBay Auctions APIs for listings Exact Target Bulk Email Tiered pricing Rhapsody Music Partnerships Salesforce.com CRM / SFA SaaS per-seat licenses

APIs as biz-dev enabler (aka Bizdev 2.0) “ Decentralized business development” -Toni Schneider Consumer/Hacker Business/Partner Flickr API

API Billionaires Club, 2011 edition 5 billion API calls / day (April 2010) 1.6 billion API-delivered stories / month (October 2010) 5 billion API calls / day (October 2009) 8 billion API calls / month (Q3 2009) 3 billion API calls / month (March 2009) 13 billion API calls / day (May 2011) Over 260 billion objects stored in S3 (January 2011) 10 billion API calls / month (January 2011)

The big picture
Trends

The big technical debates
Protocols and styles
REST vs. SOAP vs. …
Data formats
XML vs. JSON vs. …
Standards
So many to choose from…

REST vs. SOAP: Simplicity wins again Distribution of API protocols and styles Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011

Data formats: lots of choices XML, JSON, RSS, Atom, YAML, iCalendar, CSV, Serialized PHP, HTML, PNG, GeoRSS, vCard, Text, RDF, OPML, MediaRSS, VML, TV-Anytime, hCalendar, FOAF, XSPF, SQL, GML, CDF

JSON Rising: 55% of all new APIs support JSON Percentage of new APIs with JSON support Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011

20% of all new APIs support only JSON Percentage of new APIs with only JSON support Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011

1 in every 5 new APIs says “ goodbye XML ” Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011 Percentage of APIs with XML support

But only 1% of APIs offer RDF support Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011

Semantic web service discovery Based on directory of 3,200 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2011
Long history of research on ‘discovery’
Often WS-* related
Ex: SAWSDL
Now outrun by rise of REST?
What can PW do in this regard?
LOD for APIs?
RDFa per API?

The big picture
Trends

API as Product When an API is not an extension of your product, but it is your product

Screw the web site, let’s focus on the API Qwerly shutters profile pages in favor of lucrative ‘DNS for people’ API TechCrunch, May 5, 2011

API business models, circa 2005

API business models 2011

Invisible Mashups Classic mashup HousingMaps.com Invisible mashup Ooyala.com EC2 + S3 + SQS +

Invisible APIs + APIs are hiding in plain sight, if you know where to look

Invisible APIs, the Steve Jobs edition Twitter Integrated right into iOS 5

Have we seen this before? 1995 Why do we need a Web site? 2000 2005 2010 Of course we have a Web site Of course we have an API Why do we need an API?

thank you Questions, ideas, comments? Email me: john@programmableweb.com Twitter: @programmableweb @johnmusser

Open APIs and the Semantic Web 2011

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