1. Open APIs: State of the Market
John Musser, ProgrammableWeb
@johnmusser
Cloudstock, December 6th, 2010

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

3. Open APIs: State of the Market
The big picture
The business of open APIs
Design and technology
Trends

4. Open APIs: Why bother? Make money Save money Build brand
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

5. 2010 has a 2x increase in new APIs per month over last year
Open API timeline
It took 8 years to get to 1,000 APIs, but only months to get to 2,000 APIs
2010 has a 2x increase in new APIs per month over last year
2000
2002
2003
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
105 APIs
352 APIs
601 APIs
1,116 APIs
1,628 APIs
? APIs

6. APIs: Some very competitive markets
Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

7. Open APIs: Sampling growth by sector

8. Open APIs: Sampling growth by sector
YouTube sells for $1.7B

9. Open APIs: Sampling growth by sector
Facebook opens platform

10. Open APIs: State of the Market
The big picture
The business of open APIs
Design and technology
Trends

11. What makes an open API successful?
The underlying service
Or, a good API on a bad service is lipstick on a pig
A plan and a business model
Simple, open, easily adopted
Providing choices
Good developer support 11

12. Best practice: Bake your business model into your API
API business models
Who
What
How
Amazon Associates
Retail
Affiliate Model
Amazon S3
Infrastructure
Pay-as-you-go
eBay
Auctions
APIs for listings
Exact Target
Bulk
Tiered pricing
Rhapsody
Music
Partnerships
Salesforce.com
CRM / SFA
SaaS per-seat licenses
Best practice: Bake your business model into your API

13. APIs as biz-dev enabler (aka Bizdev 2.0)
“Decentralized business development”
-Toni Schneider
Flickr API
Business/Partner
Consumer/Hacker

14. API Billionaires Club 5 billion API calls / day (April 2010)
5 billion API calls / day (October 2009)
3 billion API calls / day, 75% of all traffic (April 2010)
8 billion API calls / month (Q3 2009)
3 billion API calls / month (March 2009)
1.1 billion API-delivered stories / month (March 2010)
Over 50% of all traffic via API (March 2008)
Over 100 billion objects stored in S3 (March 2010)

15. Open APIs: State of the Market
The big picture
The business of open APIs
Design and technology
Trends

16. The big technical debates
Protocols and styles
REST vs. SOAP vs. …
Data formats
XML vs. JSON vs. …
Standards
So many to choose from… 16

17. REST vs. SOAP: Simplicity wins again
Distribution of API protocols and styles
Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

18. REST vs. SOAP, more of both, but a lot more REST
Total number of APIs based on protocol and style
Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

19. 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

20. JSON Rising: 45% of all new APIs support JSON
197 APIs are now JSON-only,
including Facebook Graph, Etsy, and
Twitter’s Streaming API
Percentage of new APIs with JSON support
Based on directory of 2,300 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, November 2010

21. 20% of all “Social” APIs now with OAuth support
OAuth picking up steam
120+ APIs with OAuth support
20% of all “Social” APIs now with OAuth support

22. Open APIs: State of the Market
The big picture
The business of open APIs
Design and technology
Trends

23. APIs growing up: versioning & other best practices
Old Twitter
New Twitter

24. APIs growing up: keeping developers informed

25. APIs growing up: keeping developers informed

26. API monitoring: don’t let this happen to you…
via

27. APIs are the glue of SaaS
Firewall
Customize
Integrate
API
Internal App: web/desktop
Traditional Platform
Customize
Integrate
API
SaaS App
SaaS Service
Internal Apps
& Systems

28. 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

29. 1 API can support 100’s of devices
Source: Michael Hart, Netflix 29 29

30. Mobile explosion is driving API explosion
Pageview growth: NPR.org vs NPR mobile
Source: NPR 30 30

31. API as Product
When an API is not an extension of your product, but it is your product

32. Invisible Mashups, part 1
Classic mashup
Invisible mashup
HousingMaps.com
Ooyala.com +
EC2 + S3 + SQS 32 32

33. Invisible Mashups, part 2+
APIs are hiding in plain sight, if you know where to look

34. Have we seen this before?
Why do we need a Web site?
Of course we have a Web site
Why do we need an API?
Of course we have an API
1995
2000
2005
2010

35. thank you Questions, ideas, comments?
me:
@johnmusser