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API design - give us some example applications
Gavin Bell
Wednesday, 04 June 2008 09:49 UTC
Some of you have regularly asked for an API. We have an internal one, which is not secure enough for external use.
Rather than ask what you think the API should consist of, can you give some examples of the sort of things you’d want to build with an API? Bear in mind that we have RSS most places and some microformats in use already.
Example applications, html badge embedding, contact importing, that kind of thing is what I’m looking for, but feel free to suggest other ideas. No promises on timelines, as I’ve said we have the hubs work to finish next.
Integration with friendfeed, cocomment, opensocial have all been raised, but we’d like to get a better handle on what you want, not what we think we should make for you next =)
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To continue this line of thinking, this is a good read on APIs – no api you suck… A blog post giving an overview of why for consumer facing sites an API is essential
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Main reason for using an API is to access the site in ways other than via a web browser – which is rather cumbersome with the current site design.
I’m thinking Firefox extension: the best ones (such as Boost for Facebook or Yahoo’s del.icio.us extension) give you so much functionality that you need never visit the website.
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“Services not site”. A motto I wholeheartedly subscribe to. An API would be really useful. Combine with other sources, mashup in various ways, a browser extension. So many possibilities.
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I think that giving a chance for people to come up with their own applications or allowing the import of applications that have bee already developed for other social networks would be very useful. I also dislike the whole zombies/etc going on in Facebook but you could screen the applications and only allow work related apps in here with a very valid justification.
Aside from that I don’t really see a use for APIs right now. I would not even recommend focusing on integrating some application format since there is many other things that would have a stronger impact on usability. I suggest maybe focusing more in integrating other Nature services, primarily Connotea and Postgenomic. Example: A page with the shared Connotea library of my contacts with the possibility of hiding some of my contacts. Maybe groups could have a linked Connotea account ?This would also create incentives for users of NN to use Connotea and vice-versa. Down the road you would could have the information about what are the areas of specialization of a scientists (from NN) their publications (from NN) and the list of articles they find interesting (from Connotea). The combination could be powerful for a recommendation engine.
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Sorry, I’m a bit late in this discussion. Some feature requests could be done with RSS. I would for example like to follow the discussion of a forum with all comments in a single RSS feed. Or follow all blog posts, forum posts and comments of a contact in one RSS feed.
Writing and editing blog posts could be done much better with an API. I would love to use an external application such as MarsEdit for this. CoComment has already been mentioned. Access to the location and hub information of people would allow fun projects such as Google Maps mashups.
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