API Hubs: Bringing Big Data to the Masses
March 12, 2012
It’s no secret that the amount of data being collected and stored worldwide is exploding, and every day, more and more companies are allowing you to access their data stockpile through the use of open APIs. By essentially crowd-sourcing creative ideas for how to use their data and content, companies benefit immensely from introducing an API, and with bounties being handed out for the best applications, the developer community benefits too. Everyone wins.
The exponential growth in APIs is great for developers, but it does introduce another problem: How do you find out about an API in time to implement your awesome idea before anyone else does?
Here’s how: API hubs. These are the three that I know about:
“If this then that” is an awesome new website that brings the benefits of open APIs to the technology-illiterate masses. It’s shockingly simple. The premise is that with a few clicks, you can have ifttt set up an automated response to basically any API-friendly event on the Internet. For example, using the Weather Channel and Facebook’s APIs, I can have ifttt post a “Who wants to go skiing?” status every time tomorrow’s forecast calls for snow. Or I can have it text my phone every time a new studio apartment in my neighborhood hits Craigslist. The possibilities are literally endless, and ifttt lists some of the coolest ones generated by users under its “recipes” tab.
Having been around for more than 5 years, PW is a dinosaur in the API world. It’s also by far the most comprehensive directory on the web for APIs and mashups. Additionally, they have great content around best practices and hot new APIs, host a forum for developers, and recently unveiled API Pulse, a SaaS solution to monitor your API. If you’re still not convinced that APIs are the future, just look at the growth in PW’s directory. (at the time I’m writing this, it lists 5339 APIs) That’s up from 3023 last year, and 1795 the year before.
Mashape is another promising new website currently in beta testing. Like ProgrammableWeb, it aspires to be a central directory for finding APIs. But they plan to do a whole lot more than just discovery, offering thorough documentation, request testing, and allowing you to download the client libraries right from Mashape. While the website has a long way to go (they currently only offer about 300 APIs), my bet is that its ease of use will quickly close the gap with PW and it’ll become a household name in the dev community.