Latino Web Creations

One of the phenomena that are at the heart of Web 2.0 and give the greatest potential are the APIs, which are small systems to query external databases in an automated fashion. With their help you can build new sites based on information from others. This creates, in fact, all the mashups that use Google Maps or the various applications that use Twitter data. The great paradox is that most APIs are free (although limited quantitative) and do not generate direct income for the owner of the information derived with their help. In fact, Google did not give in principle the use of their maps, and even forbade it, and just opened an API programmers noting that they were doing was real fancy stuff they never would have happened to their own engineers.

An API is therefore an opportunity for others to exploit our data in innovative ways. It is a tool for innovation (open, as external) tremendously powerful. With the addition that the outcome of this innovation is for the owner of the API (and the data extracted) but for the company or programmer who has learned to use it wisely. There are many interesting cases. The closest is probably Panoramio. When Google Maps was born three Spanish created a website that allowed post photos on the map. They did so well that Google loved the idea and not just let them use their API but even allowed them to use their own servers. And finally, when it confirmed the viability of the product, bought for about $ 6 million.

Google did not run any risk, encouraged innovation, contributed to greater dissemination of maps and finally was able to secure the product for a price not too high. Creating APIs is therefore a very smart if you want to bet on a certain data and get new products to be generated from them. There are always more likely to innovate the millions of programmers who can access those APIs from anywhere in the world that the employees of the company. But the company that has bet on the Twitter API is no doubt. In fact, the data indicate that more than half the tweets hits are coming from external applications like TweetDeck or Seesmic. There are thousands of products developed from the Twitter API. Some of them, requiring very high volumes of information, pay for it with what has already become a business model.

But others, most do not pay for it. What then is his interest to Twitter? On the one hand, contributing to consolidate messaging platform with products many times more usable or include features not originally foreseen. And when Twitter detects one of these services is very interesting, what it does is buy it. He has been the case without going any further, Tweetdeck and Summize (now Twitter search engine makes up, which initially did not exist).

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