More Meaningful, Niche API Hubs

Right now when it comes to API discovery you have the OG ProgrammableWeb, and newcomers Mashape and APIHub (which also owns ProgrammableWeb). All three of these sites provide you with a large directory of APIs you can search and browse at, when looking for APIs.

I pull new APIs from all these sources, in hopes of staying in tune with what is out there. However, I have a different approach to my API database of APIs. I only keep track of the best APIs I see. I'm not concerned with every API available, I’m interested in the best approaches to APIs.

I’m hoping in 2014 that we'll see more niche API hubs emerge, that specialize in specific areas like government, finance, photos, video and other specific areas that developers would be specifically interested in--allowing domain experts to step in and help guide us.

When looking at the big picture it can be hard to see the gaps and opportunities. If you specialize in a particular area, you really get to know what resources people are offering, how they are serving these resources up, and potentially what is missing fro the consumer perspective.

This doesn't have to be exclusive from the existing efforts, Mashape and APIHub could provide more curation tools for domain experts to use in organizing, deploying and management of these hubs.  

Just a thought...