The concept of the “Open API”1 has held various levels of esteem and support over the previous decade. It emerged as a fundamental building block of the Web 2.0 movement, with services like Flickr and Google Maps launching officially supported APIs a short while after launching themselves. The social giants Twitter and Facebook followed with APIs of their own. By the end of 2006, it seemed like an open API was a prerequisite for a successful launch.
But support for these APIs started to wane as the early Web 2.0 companies started to mature and focus on growing revenues and owning their platforms. For Twitter in particular, the appeal of following Facebook’s lead and creating a ‘walled garden’ was too great. They (in)famously began to restrict access to their API in 2012. Some critics of the company see this change as the root cause of some of the major issues facing Twitter today, such as the stagnation of user growth and a lack of meaningful platform innovation.2
Twitter was far from the only major company to make such a change however—by the end of 2015 Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others had shut off open access to their APIs. These API shutdowns didn’t just have a negative impact on developers. As the drawbridges went up, users started to feel the negative effects. People began to lament the end of the open web.
Recently however, open APIs have been having something of a renaissance. This has been driven in part by the explosion of messaging—Facebook Messenger, Slack, HipChat, Telegram, LINE, WeChat, and others all offer open, well documented APIs that allow developers to build integrations for their platforms. The hope of these companies, and one that has been largely rewarded, is that developers will build applications on top of their messaging platforms, increasing the overall value. Slack has even started a $80-million dollar venture capital fund for companies who are building integrations for their platform.
For these new messaging platforms, it’s an important part of their value proposition—both to their investors and their users. But it isn’t just a one way street. We’re seeing more and more companies with open APIs that allow developers to tie together various platforms and services in a way reminiscent of the early days of Web 2.0 and the ‘remix culture’ that produced sites like HousingMaps and WeatherBonk.
Companies like Uber don’t care how you call an Uber, just that you do—and their API makes sure that it’s as easy as possible for developers to enable just that. Payment startups Square and Stripe don’t care where the payment is taking place or what’s being paid for, just that they process it. For smaller startups, it can be a great way to expand reach without the overhead of a business development team. There are even startups popping up that do the hard work of connecting various products and services for you.
Messaging’s emergence as the central interface paradigm on mobile and the resulting explosion of messaging platforms has companies building open APIs again, and that’s a good thing. For developers, being able to tap in to a rich ecosystem of existing building blocks allows for rapid prototyping, iteration, and increased focus on what makes their product or service unique. In turn, app-weary customers are rewarded with applications that are integrated where appropriate to provide the best experience, instead of having services walled off from each other. The open web is dead—long live the open web!
API stands for Application Programming Interface.↩︎
Since Jack Dorsey returned as CEO there has been something of a reversal.↩︎