This is a great article by Adam Kleinberg on how a brand and enabling third parties to write exciting applications and mashups targeting new channels via your Api is so important.
The resources required to produce a website and accompanying iPhone app can be significant - what if you invested in your business/eCommerce API and a referral/developer programme instead?
The world becomes your development partner and ANYONE can start creating applications backed by YOUR business.
Take Android as an example - it's gaining market share at such a rapid pace that you will need an Android App soon to stay in the game as it's not a sector you can afford to ignore. Pouring all your money into a specific vendor channel (say iPhone) could mean you are left out in the cold when other technologies/forms/channels become viable. With an API in place it would be a simple, cheaper exercise in creating an Android application on top of the API calls - and the API gives you options in how you go about this; give the API docs to an off-shore resource, in-house team or let some bright spark come to you with their app or idea.
Sure you will always need YOUR website but an API "powers the possible" - who knows what killer mashup someone out there could dream up tomorrow - and your business could benefit from it with thousands of new sales. You have the infrastructure to process sales and transactions - let the other 6,891,463,699-ish people (world population as of today) figure out how to make money out of it for you.
2011 - year of the API! (Oh and Geckoboard, 2011 is all about the dashboard)
Happy New Year Everyone!
The resources required to produce a website and accompanying iPhone app can be significant - what if you invested in your business/eCommerce API and a referral/developer programme instead?
The world becomes your development partner and ANYONE can start creating applications backed by YOUR business.
Take Android as an example - it's gaining market share at such a rapid pace that you will need an Android App soon to stay in the game as it's not a sector you can afford to ignore. Pouring all your money into a specific vendor channel (say iPhone) could mean you are left out in the cold when other technologies/forms/channels become viable. With an API in place it would be a simple, cheaper exercise in creating an Android application on top of the API calls - and the API gives you options in how you go about this; give the API docs to an off-shore resource, in-house team or let some bright spark come to you with their app or idea.
Sure you will always need YOUR website but an API "powers the possible" - who knows what killer mashup someone out there could dream up tomorrow - and your business could benefit from it with thousands of new sales. You have the infrastructure to process sales and transactions - let the other 6,891,463,699-ish people (world population as of today) figure out how to make money out of it for you.
2011 - year of the API! (Oh and Geckoboard, 2011 is all about the dashboard)
Happy New Year Everyone!
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Adam