the business of apis 2009 - active network

Intro

Opening Active Data Jeremy Thomas Director of Product Development, Active.com

About Active.com

Circa 1998: La Jolla, CA

Map provided by Google Maps

About Active.com

1020 Prospect Street

Map provided by Google Maps

About Active.com

Circa 1999…

About Active.com

Circa 2000…

About Active.com

Then we upgraded (circa 2003)…

About Active.com

And again (circa 2007)…

About Active.com

Which brings us to today

The Chiefs

Active is run by these guys:

Acquisitions

And they’ve acquired a few companies over the years:

About Active.com

2009: North America, China Australia, UK

Map provided by Google Maps

Data

Together we are called , and we produce a lot of data. –  Events –  Event Reviews –  Classes –  Training Plans –  Registrant Details –  Leagues –  Memberships –  High school Sports Rankings –  Race Results –  Campsites –  Hunting/Fishing licensing

More Data

•  Over 500,000 events are added to active.com annually.

•  We process over 40,000,000 transactions per year (event registrations, hunting/fishing license purchases, etc.).

•  We rank 99% of high school football and lacrosse teams in the United States

•  We rank in Comescore’s top 10 sports properties.

•  We serve over 1,000,000,000 page views/year.

Closed Data

Most of this data was protected and closed.

Open Data

But we needed it to be more open.

Why Open Data?

Prime Directive: Build the World’s Largest Directory of Things to Do

Why Open Data?

Cross-silo communication

Why Open Data?

Integration with Business Partners.

Internal Campaign

To do this, I had to talk to this guy about our options.

Internal Campaign

And he was convinced by:

•  the “head” and “shoulder” argument (borrowed from Oren Michaels), not the Longtail Argument

•  Easier Divisional Integration

Internal Campaign

So we worked with Mashery to setup an API Gateway.

Open for Businesses

We opened the API to business partners. I tweeted the fact that we were working on an API, and…

Programmableweb.com

The community became interested. Somebody put us on programmableweb.com (it wasn’t me).

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/active

Developer Community

And they tweeted about the possibilities.

http://twitter.com/dtyler21/status/790344865

Developer Community

They wanted to build: – race calendars – mountain biking websites –  iPhone event search apps – high school sports ranking widgets –  tennis tournament finders –  things to do near you widgets – campground finders

Developer Community

So what do we do with these developers who are interested in our data?

Community

Talk this guy, ,into opening the door to a few of them to see what happens.

Community

We screen every API key request.

Open for Developers

•  With no formal marketing, we have over 130 Registered API users since March, 2009.

•  Developer-originated traffic is a bonus, but will have material impact (5-10% increase in pageviews) in 2010 through: –  Increased publicity through social media. –  API-focused B2B relationships through targeted

content distribution. –  Stronger API portfolio including easy to consume

widgets. –  Self-sustaining API community.

Active.com API

Thanks!

Jeremy Thomas Director of Product Development, Active.com

twitter.com/jgrahamthomas community.active.com/blogs/productdev

Several photos came from istockphoto.com, and the maps on slide 2 and 3 are from Google. Old screenshots came from archive.org.