Today we’re marking another milestone in our API directory: we now list 4,000 of them. It’s only been six months since we toasted the 3,000th. And, as we’ve said before, the site ended its first year, 2005, listing only 105 APIs. The whole web as a platform has come a long way and done so very quickly. There are some areas, such as social, which are incredibly popular. There’s also a lot of room for expansion, as industries like travel and retail have yet to fully embrace APIs. How soon will we mark the 5,000th?
ProgrammableWeb has reached a major milestone by adding its 3,000th web service API to our API directory. We’ve come a long way when you consider there were only 105 listed at the end of 2005. As we’ve noted previously, the growth rate of APIs doubled, which led to an influx of new services. Below are some of the trends we’ve spotted as the directory marks a new high.
It’s 54 degrees today in Mountain View, which any Googler could tell you by looking outside… or by using the company’s undocumented weather API. The service was created for use with iGoogle, but the interface is easily discoverable and covers a handful of other features, in addition to weather.
We list 423 YouTube mashups in our directory. Naturally, some are better than others. Below are our Top 10, as determined by popularity and editorial judgment.
When Microsoft launched their much-touted new search engine Bing last week it generated a lots of press and despite a somewhat muted expectations, it turned-out to be something of a hit. But lost in all the broader buzz about Bing was some news for developers: Bing has an API (we’ve now added a new Bing API Profile with technical details).
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Except when they’re building mashups. Or so it seems, given how often the 5 weather APIs in our directory get used by developers. While perhaps not as sexy as the latest social networking API, here at ProgrammableWeb we have evidence that developers value a good API for weather, having built over 70 weather mashups to date.
Dating websites don’t have anything on you now. Convert a user’s Internet current IP address (like 208.75.242.38) to a city name, or even geo coordinates with these IP lookup APIs. And do it for free.
Last week ProgrammableWeb crossed one of its biggest milestones thus far when we added our 1,000th web service API to our directory. This is a long way from the 32 APIs we started with back in the summer of 2005. Back then even the phrase “web mashup” was only a few months old.
While map mashups are what have defined this genre of application, the second most popular type of web mashup here on ProgrammableWeb are photo mashups. How popular? Just this past week the number of photo-related mashups passed the 500 mark, and there are now 505 listed.
A wide array of content and functionality has been incorporated into the ever-growing number of mashups out on the web today. From enterprise mashups to proof-of-concept hacks, developers and would be developers are leveraging the power of mashups to provide information in new and compelling ways. Mashups are still a relatively new phenomena, and as this new type of online application evolves it will become increasingly more important to ensure that your mashup adheres to a variety of best practices. Summarized below are five key best practices that you should strive to use in the development of your mashup.
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