Open APIs: State of the Market

John Musser, ProgrammableWeb@johnmusser

Cloudstock, December 6th, 2010

Introduction

ProgrammableWeb.com• API & mashup directory• News, community, dev tools• 2,400 Web APIs • 5,300 mashups

Open APIs: State of the Market

• The big picture• The business of open APIs• Design and technology• Trends

Open APIs: Why bother?

• Make money 60% of all listings on eBay.com added via their APIs

• Save money SmugMug saves > $500K/year with Amazon S3 Storage

• Build brand Google Maps 300% growth vs 20% MapQuest

• Move to the cloud Over 50% of all transactions via their API

• Go anywhere Netflix now available on over 200 devices

Open API timeline

2000 2002 2005 2006 2007

105 APIs 352 APIs

2003 2008

1,116 APIs601 APIs

1) It took 8 years to get to 1,000 APIs, but only 18 months to get to 2,000 APIs

2) 2010 has a 2x increase in new APIs per month over last year

1) It took 8 years to get to 1,000 APIs, but only 18 months to get to 2,000 APIs

2) 2010 has a 2x increase in new APIs per month over last year

2009

1,628 APIs

2010

? APIs

APIs: Some very competitive markets

Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

Open APIs: Sampling growth by sector

Open APIs: Sampling growth by sector

YouTube sells for $1.7BYouTube sells for $1.7B

Open APIs: Sampling growth by sector

Facebook opens platformFacebook opens platform

Open APIs: State of the Market

• The big picture• The business of open APIs• Design and technology• Trends

What makes an open API successful?

1. The underlying service• Or, a good API on a bad service is lipstick on a pig

2. A plan and a business model3. Simple, open, easily adopted4. Providing choices5. Good developer support

API business models

Who What HowAmazon Associates Retail Affiliate ModelAmazon S3 Infrastructure Pay-as-you-goeBay Auctions APIs for listingsExact Target Bulk Email Tiered pricingRhapsody Music PartnershipsSalesforce.com CRM / SFA SaaS per-seat licenses

Best practice: Bake your business model into your API

APIs as biz-dev enabler (aka Bizdev 2.0)

“Decentralized business development” -Toni Schneider

Consumer/HackerBusiness/Partner

Flickr API

API Billionaires Club

5 billion API calls / day (April 2010)

1.1 billion API-delivered stories / month (March 2010)

5 billion API calls / day (October 2009)

8 billion API calls / month (Q3 2009)

3 billion API calls / month (March 2009)

3 billion API calls / day, 75% of all traffic (April 2010)

Over 50% of all traffic via API (March 2008)

Over 100 billion objects stored in S3 (March 2010)

Open APIs: State of the Market

• The big picture• The business of open APIs• Design and technology• Trends

The big technical debates

• Protocols and stylesREST vs. SOAP vs. …

• Data formatsXML vs. JSON vs. …

• StandardsSo many to choose from…

REST vs. SOAP: Simplicity wins again

Distribution of API protocols and stylesBased on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

REST vs. SOAP, more of both, but a lot more REST

Total number of APIs based on protocol and styleBased on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

Data formats: lots of choices

XML, JSON, RSS, Atom, YAML, iCalendar, CSV, Serialized PHP, HTML,

PNG, GeoRSS, vCard, Text, RDF, OPML, MediaRSS, VML, TV-Anytime, hCalendar,

FOAF, XSPF, SQL, GML, CDF

JSON Rising: 45% of all new APIs support JSON

Percentage of new APIs with JSON support

197 APIs are now JSON-only,

including Facebook Graph, Etsy, and

Twitter’s Streaming API

197 APIs are now JSON-only,

including Facebook Graph, Etsy, and

Twitter’s Streaming API

Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

OAuth picking up steam

20% of all “Social” APIs now with OAuth support

120+ APIs with OAuth support

Open APIs: State of the Market

• The big picture• The business of open APIs• Design and technology• Trends

APIs growing up: versioning & other best practices

Old Twitter

http://twitter.com/users/show/noradio.xml

New Twitter

http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show/noradio.xml

APIs growing up: keeping developers informed

APIs growing up: keeping developers informed

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/ebay/status

API monitoring: don’t let this happen to you

via http://monitor.programmableweb.com

…

APIs are the glue of SaaS

CustomizeCustomize IntegrateIntegrate

APIAPI

Internal App: web/desktopInternal App: web/desktop

Traditional PlatformTraditional Platform

CustomizeCustomizeIntegrateIntegrate

APIAPI

SaaS AppSaaS App

SaaS ServiceSaaS ServiceInternal Apps

& Systems

Internal Apps

& Systems

Fire

wal

l

SLAs and Premium Support for APIs

• Service Level Agreements and Premium Support• Google Maps Premier (starts at $10K/yr)• Amazon’s new Premium Support packages

1 API can support 100’s of devices

Source: Michael Hart, Netflix

Mobile explosion is driving API explosion

Source: NPR

Pageview growth: NPR.org vs NPR mobile

API as Product

When an API is not an extension of your product, but it is your product

Invisible Mashups, part 1

Classic mashup

HousingMaps.com

Invisible mashup

Ooyala.com

EC2 + S3 + SQS+

Invisible Mashups, part 2

+

APIs are hiding in plain sight, if you know where to look

Have we seen this before?

1995

Why do we need a Web site?

2000 2005 2010

Of course we have a Web site

Of course we have an API

Why do we need an API?

thank you

Questions, ideas, comments? Email me: john@programmableweb.com

Twitter: @programmableweb @johnmusser