The world around us is being redefined and a new currency is taking shape. Tweets on Twitter, wall posts to Facebook, pictures on Instagram, files on Dropbox and health data via Fitbit are emblematic of the emerging API-driven economy.
This data isn’t just social, nor just a currency. It is vital personal data that contains details from intimate aspects of our daily lives. Platform players like Facebook and Twitter have shown through their APIs the possibilities that emerge when developers can build, unfettered with their own creativity on top of this data -- enriching people’s lives in a richer, more connected way.
With the number of social and personal data APIs available today, it is getting increasingly difficult for developers to keep up to speed on which platforms are most important to their end users, the technical differences between each platform’s APIs and where to keep up with the changes from each platform as they are rolled out.
Even with all this confusion, there is help:
- API Evangelist delivers news about the business of APIs and best practices for API owners, politics around API management and developers rights, in hopes of providing insight into which APIs are delivering the most value for the API space and application developers
- Singly provides a single API with which developers can build against multiple social and personal data API platforms using a single authentication model, standardized endpoints, a common object model and a whole host of solutions for challenging infrastructure issues that data intensive applications face
We believe the industry needs more leadership and content and we have partnered up to deliver:
- Real-time news, changes and updates about top social and personal data platforms Information about the business of APIs and best practices from direct experience with top social and personal data APIs
- Technical details from daily monitoring and integration with top social and personal APIs Politics and legal issues around personal and social data, how this impacts end users, API owners and developers
- Data about how developers access and use social and personal data in their applications A larger voice for developers in a space, where currently API owners dominate the conversation Education, access and greater awareness to end users of their personal and social data Assistance for API owners to better reach and leverage the API developer community
In spending time with Jason Cavnar (@jasoncavnar), Jeremie Miller (@jeremie) and the Singly team, it’s clear they have a very valuable and unique perspective when it comes to API consumption and the future of personal data -- not only for consumers and developers but also that will benefit the platforms themselves. Every day they are monitoring and consuming the personal and social data flowing through the most important APIs in the space and I can’t wait to tell the stories of their journey and share their insights along the way. Keep an eye out for these stories in the coming weeks.
