tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6068543375298275592.post-3595889865853137872007-11-15T15:30:00.000-08:002008-02-16T20:03:31.765-08:002008-02-16T20:03:31.765-08:00So these days we see everyone exposing their API. Faceboook made it the most popular because you could suddenly get the exposure to users, you craved for, as a software developer. Even Stanford gave a course on how to build facebook apps. Then came Opensocial, Digg API and Google social graph API. I even regard Android as an API. So what is the big deal about exposing the API. Isn't that what we software developers have been doing for ages. Its the API whose help documentation fills up the piles in MSDN. Windows exposed various API in the form of COM objects, system calls etc. Apparently the API was only exposed by "Platforms". Windows, Linux kernel, QuarkXpress, Adobe Acrobat, MS Office, Internet Explorer are some API exposing platforms from the past. The whole idea was to make the platforms more usable and let developers extend the functionality by coming up with innovative uses. It is a way to tap into a mindshare of highly intelligent people - the developers and use them for promoting your platform. I remember the Quark developers had developed some pretty ingenious solutions for some problems in the platform. But there is an ethical downside in this model. When the developers make new apps, the platform owners get to see what apps are being built and nothing stops them from making those apps themselves. In traditional software loaded on the PC (windows , IE etc) the apps used to sit locally and so the app owner never knew what was popular unless explicitly communicated. In web world all the apps come/connect to the single web platform and so the owners know exactly what app is getting attention and that what is a more compelling use they never thought of. This was the case with the facebook API because the some of the most popular third party apps were later duplicated by facebook itself or (to be politically correct) their functionality was incorporated into the platform itself. Google's Android is an interesting experiment because in my view its like scratching and sniffing before buying. If there are compelling apps it makes sense to release the full blown platform on the real phones. The next frontier - tap into a bigger mindshare - build tools so intutive that the normal users can create the apps easily. Imagine a VB like drag and drop interface with which you could build a facebook app in minutes.prabhdeep singhnoreply@blogger.com0