As I listen to my hangout with Wade Foster of Zapier, I'm considering the overlap between my API reciprocity, bots, virtualization, containerization, webhooks, and even voice research. At the same time I'm thinking about how APIs are being used to inject valuable data, content, and other valuable API driven resources to the stream of existing applications we use every day.
Some of this thinking is derived from my bot research, where they impersonate Twitter users, or respond to specific key words, phrases, or keyboard shortcuts in Slack. Some of this thinking comes from learning more about the ability to inject "code steps" into multi-step workflows with Zapier. Then as I continue doing my curation of news I read about Uber allowing developers to create trip experiences, opening up another window for potential API driven injection into the Uber "experience".
It got me thinking, where else is this happening? I would say Twitter Cards is a form of this, but is an example that is more media focused, rather than bots (although it could be bot driven behavior). Then I started looking across the 50 areas of the API life cycle I'm monitoring, and voice stood out, as another area of potential overlap. Amazon is allowing developers to inject API driven content, data, and other resources into the conversational stream occurring Alexa users. I don't see this being much different that bots injecting responses into the messaging stream of Slack and Twitter users.
I'm just getting going with these thoughts. Something I'm thinking containers, and serverless approaches to API deployment are going to impact this line of thought as well. I'm considering pulling together a research project around this overlap, something I will call API injection. Essentially, how are people injecting API driven data, content, and other resources, into the streams of other applications, using APIs. I could see a whole new breed of API provider emerge, just to satisfy the appetite of bots, and other API injection tooling, in engaging with users via the streams they are already existing daily, whether messaging, voice, or any other online experience.
I do not think this is limited to consumer level injections. I could see the B2B approaches to API injection, opening up some pretty interesting API monetization opportunities. Hock'n your bot warez within other people's business streams. ;-) We'll see where this line of thought goes...regardless it is fun to think about.
