Overview of the Open API ecosystem by @johnmusser of @programmableweb. Given at Salesforce.com's Cloudstock event, Dec 2010. Summarizes key metrics and growth patterns, best practices and trends.
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 5 billion API calls / day (April 2010) 1.1 billion API-delivered stories / month (March 2010) 5 billion API calls / day (October 2009) 8 billion API calls / month (Q3 2009) 3 billion API calls / month (March 2009) 3 billion API calls / day, 75% of all traffic (April 2010) Over 50% of all traffic via API (March 2008) Over 100 billion objects stored in S3 (March 2010)
REST vs. SOAP: Simplicity wins again Distribution of API protocols and styles Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010
REST vs. SOAP, more of both, but a lot more REST Total number of APIs based on protocol and style Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010
JSON Rising: 45% of all new APIs support JSON Percentage of new APIs with JSON support 197 APIs are now JSON-only, including Facebook Graph, Etsy, and Twitter’s Streaming API Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010
OAuth picking up steam 20% of all “Social” APIs now with OAuth support 120+ APIs with OAuth support
APIs growing up: versioning & other best practices Old Twitter http://twitter.com/users/show/noradio.xml New Twitter http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show/noradio.xml
APIs are the glue of SaaS Internal Apps & Systems Customize Integrate API Internal App: web/desktop Traditional Platform Customize Integrate API SaaS App SaaS Service Firewall
1 API can support 100’s of devices Source: Michael Hart, Netflix
Mobile explosion is driving API explosion Source: NPR Pageview growth: NPR.org vs NPR mobile
API as Product When an API is not an extension of your product, but it is your product