The Pros and Cons of APIs / 04.22.08
APIs allow web sites to push out their data to external sites therefore giving them a chance to spread the data virally. This is a very good thing if done properly. In most cases the growth of your API services can surpass that of the actual website as is the case with Twitter where it has been reported that API traffic is 10x that of site traffic. It can be argued that Flickr wouldn’t have had its rapid rise to fame if it didn’t offer a quick and easy way for people to share their photos on their own sites.
Digg is another site that has done a great job of using an API to spread itself around the web. Even on this site you can see the beginnings of our own scripts/widgets/API in the sidebar with the inclusion of Clips from our different communities. Because of the examples provided it may be a foregone conclusion that you have to create an API to really succeed on the web, but that isn’t always the case.
Some sites and services aren’t meant to be used with APIs and external services and sometimes the APIs can become more effective than the actual site. Going back to the Twitter example how many people that use Twitter visit Twitter.com anymore? One of the proposed revenue models for Twitter has always been to place ads on their pages, but if nobody is visiting the pages this model doesn’t work and sticking ads within the actual tweets would probably cause a revolt.
The only task you can do on the site that can’t be done in the API is change your user settings I believe. Think about that. You can do everything with Twitter through the use of the API. This is great for consumers and developers, but is it so great for Twitter? Without the API they wouldn’t be where they are now, but with the API are they still anywhere? Let us not pretend that Twitter is smashing the web just because we read about it on all the geek sites and everyone is clearly on the Twitter bandwagon. Let’s pretend we are looking at a company that has major hardware costs with no end in sight or any chance of bringing in money.
All the other API examples that I listed before utilize the API in a way that almost forces you back to the originating site. That seems like a good use of an API for a business. However, Twitter was never meant to be a destination site I suppose since its primary function is communication (the reason for it being so popular). How many other services that offer communication as their primary function require the site to be the destination site? Online email is the only example I could think of because IRC, IM and Skype don’t require it at all.
For Chawlk we could probably create an API that allowed you to setup your own Chawlk on your site, but where would that leave us? We aren’t in the API licensing business and I’m not sure many people would license an API so the other route is offering it for free. If our revenue model revolves around ads that leaves us in the same position as Twitter. From a geek standpoint you may want to do everything you can with your API, but your business sense has to kick in and see what aspects of the API actually benefit the business without taking too much away.
Other examples of sites that have blown up because of their ability to allow their data to be shown on other sites:
I could think of a thousand other sites that would do well to offer at least limited access to their data and content outside of their site, but maybe that will be used for a different entry.