How to Succeed on the Web Without Really Trying · 28 May, 02:19 PM
I feel like there’s another one of these waves coming through my aggregator, this one centering around the role of APIs is a product offering. It started with Brad Feld and the proposition that product simply has to offer an API in order to succeed today. I was skeptical; as a programmer I tend to be partial to APIs but it struck me as more of the Web 2.0, um, “business model” – a variation on “user generated content”. Dave Winer disagreed, but missed my point, I think:
…I don’t think an API is enough. As we’ve seen with Twitter, when the service goes down, there is no API and there is 100 percent lock-in.
This morning, Jason Kolb noted in a post unrelated to Brad’s that Web 2.0 Fails to Produce Cash.
Advertising is getting to be pointless, it’s so in your face on every Web site that people are numb to it. It’s also the lazy way out, where you add so little value to your users that the only way you can conceive to get money out of the interaction is to take advantage of the fact that they won’t walk away from you.
I think that’s more to the point of my concern: as a business, is an API really a necessary condition for success?
Responding to an entirely different topic, Dare posted along similar lines today, and captured both sides. There’s the problem with data incompatibility – my data isn’t portable between Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, and every other social networking site. Then, there’s the problem with a business model:
In these platforms there are actually ways for companies to make money by adding value to the ecosystem, this seems more sustainable in the long run than what we have today in the various social networking widget platforms.
To me, that’s the rub. From Brad’s position, an API is a checkbox on a wishlist, a shiny bauble to adorn your site with. It can also be an enormous resource drain, taking your support requirements to a whole new level. There are a number of counter-examples of successful companies that haven’t provided an API to users (Craigslist?), or provide APIs that are limited in critical ways, such as eBay. The question is how developers can add value to your platform and leverage that value into revenue. And that’s damned hard to do when the company building the API hasn’t established a value proposition.
— Gordon Weakliem
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