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The Digital Tumbleweed
Thoughts and ramblings of an enthusiast
RantOn: External Services and API
/rant on
While taking a break from the work effort I thought it may be cool to write a tiny module that was pluggable for my blog and possibly other services. I’m a huge fan of iLike. I love music and listen to it all the time. However, there are never enough hours in the day to find new artists and new music. Pandora is a great tool for this too but it’s not socially generated. This is where iLike has hit the nail on the head. Where they fail however is opening their API.
I am of the opinion that if you are gathering information for social networking purposes that you should allow developers to extend that functionality. I felt like creating a fast little php template that pulled information in from their site that I had full control over. Generally not too much to ask. LibraryThing, del.icio.us, and others do it so I assumed that iLike would do the same. However, it appears that they are more geared towards having their own marketing than letting anyone create what they want. They have a flash widget that they allow you to put on your site, but what about those people that want to customize the look and functionality? This widget is very limiting.
The problem I have with this and any other service that leaves out the open API is that they are really restricting the developer community from making awesome applications utilizing their services. I tend to like to customize the look & feel and functionality of tools and sites that I create. Why cant it be the same with services like that. It’s really not complicated to make rpc/soap available to the community, so why not do it?
My plea to all of you creating new applications. Make time and some effort for services. Provide some external API that developers can plug into and use. It will not only help them, but it will help you too. Be kind to the community. Give back, give us an API.
/rant off
4 Responses to “RantOn: External Services and API”
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Not an API. “The API.”
Social media sites all offer services such as comparative recommendations, STaF, FOAF data, a history, etc.
There needs to be one standard API, preferably REST, JSON-RPC, XML-RPC, or SOAP. One standard API used by all the sites, so that they can inter-operate, and that so (via OpenID or something) I don’t have to make an account on each and every site.
I would be doing some mad hacking if I could tap into the Music Genome Project and generate library-based recommendations bottom up rather than the stepwise refinement process taken by last.fm and Pandora.
@ Derik S
Yar. I agree. However, I see this a a baby steps kind of thing. It’s going to take enough proding to get them to open their services…I figure letting them, politically, figure out the best method of presenting an API is good enough right now. Then later I can contradict myself and rant about how they don’t have a uniform standard. ;D
One of the big problems from a business perspective is: how do you allow users to tap into your content and use it somewhere else and yet keep them going to your site for the ad revenues that sustain you? It’s a real balancing act…
Several years ago these community projects grew to a certain point and then they just kind of collapsed because there’s no money coming in to maintain the data. But Wikipedia is a good sign and Mozilla foundation is doing well. If it’s data that was gathered and maintained on a volunteer basis it needs to be protected. Once it’s someone’s property they’re only going to give enough to keep you coming around…
@Wade
You make a really good point. But, I prefer the accessibility of the data. My point isn’t to open all the data, but some.
To combat your point, they made a widget. So, they are willing to let their data go elsewhere…in their own format. I wanted to change that format and could not. That was my biggest gripe.