Kin Lane

API Evangelist

APIs & edX (Data & Analytics)

April 2014

• Some Quick Background On Myself...
• 25 Years Database Engineer
• 15 Years Web Applications
• 8 Years Cloud Computing
• 4 Years Studying APIs

Focus

• Technology of APIs
• Business of APIs
• Politics of APIs

Target

• Individuals
• Startups
• SMB
• Enterprise
• Government

Data

Web Services (SOAP)

RSS

(Rich Site Summary)

(Really Simple Syndication)

Content

CSV Data

Export / External

History of APIs

History of APIs

Commerce

• Salesforce (CRM)
• eBay (Auctions)
• Amazon (Products)
• Paypal (Payments)

History of APIs

Social

• Flickr (Images)
• Delicious (Bookmarks)
• Twitter (Posts, Friends, Images, etc)
• Facebook (Posts, Friends, Images, etc)

History of APIs

Cloud / Infrastructure

• Amazon S3 (Storage)
• Amazon EC2 (Compute)
• Amazon SimpleDB (Data)
• Amazon RDS (Database)

History of APIs

Mobile

• Instagram (Photos)
• Foursquare (Local)
• Pandora (Music)
• Twilio (SMS)

History of APIs

Data

• Guardian (Journalism)
• Data.Gov (Federal Government)
• World Bank (World)
• New York / Chicago / San Francisco (Municipalities)
• Census (Survey)
• NOAA (Weather)

History of APIs

Why Is It Working?

• Built on HTTP
• Simplicity
• Light-Weight
• Hackable
• Distributed
• External / Internal
• Read / Write
• Self-Service
• Any Object, Not Just Content

History of APIs

Three Essential Ingredients

• Social
• Cloud
• Mobile

Technology of APIs

Technology of APIs

Technology of APIs

Technology of APIs

Technology of APIs

Webhooks

Technology of APIs

Websockets

Business of APIs

Business of APIs

Self-Service

Business of APIs

Documentation

Business of APIs

Code Samples

Business of APIs

Communication

Business of APIs

Access Tiers

Business of APIs

Embeddable

Business of APIs

Excel

API Politics

Politics of APIs

Terms of Service

Politics of APIs

Privacy Policy

Politics of APIs

Support

Politics of APIs

Content License

Politics of APIs

Code License

Politics of APIs

Data License

Politics of APIs

Rate Limits

Politics of APIs

Availability

Politics of APIs

Roadmap

Growth of APIs

Today

API Directories

Aggregation

Automation

Real-Time

Quantified Self

Automobile

Buildings & Homes

Sensors

Programmable Web

The End

By Kin Lane (@kinlane)