When it comes to Social Networks, Facebook definitely towers over the rest when it comes to numbers. While Facebook might be hard at work to expand its reach by entering new areas, Mxit which is Africa’s largest social network has plans of its own to expand its base by throwing open its platform via the Mxit API and encouraging developers to integrate Mxit into their applications.
NewsCred, the API-driven service that provides curated news content announced a new implementation to NYDailyNews.com, the fifth largest newspaper website in the US. Leveraging NewsCred, the Daily News site will include a Desi News section targeting the rapidly growing South Asian community.
American Express found another way to convert social media to cardholder transactions at the SXSW conference using the still-private Smart Offer API. Amex’s “Sync. Tweet. Save.” social marketing promotion positions the credit card for the social media generation beyond membership points.
API service provider Mashery (a ProgrammableWeb sponsor) has launched a new app directory at SXSW which features apps built on Mashery hosted APIs. It’s a great thing for three distinct groups. First, it helps the API providers who partner with Mashery by encouraging API usage through the apps. Second, it helps app developers seeking to build an audience. Third, it helps consumers that might be interested in finding an app that uses a particular API. Granted, those would be your super savvy mobile app consumers, but that doesn’t seem so far fetched after a week at “spring break for geeks.”
After claiming in a previous post that there are no German publishers with APIs, I discovered that German news agency dpa is offering the Presseportal API for its press release service. Agencies are an integral part of the news ecosystem, and especially because the dpa is an international API provider it is a great pleasure for me to put some more light on its services.
Twilio adds full SMS support for all of Canada in its continuing its quest for expansion. All existing Canadian Twilio numbers are now SMS enabled and this functionality will be built into all newly purchased numbers. Twilio recently expanded into Europe, where SMS is still in public beta. Rumor has it that the beta is going quite well and will be ending soon. That will bring three countries fully into SMS support: the US, UK, and Canada.
This week at the Twilio Conference, the five finalists of the latest round of the Twilio Fund will be pitching their startups to compete for investment from the micro-fund. The fund is meant to encourage usage of the Twilio API as a platform and was created through a Twilio and 500 Startups partnership.
n0tice is a simple location based public notice board system. It’s completely open and unfiltered, and allows users to post any sort of notice they want, tagged with their location, and lets them read notices near them, sorted by distance. Quite a simple little idea, and if it gets a user base, it could end up being quite useful. Although first designed for iPhone, the n0tice API was quickly released to allow integration into other programs, including desktop apps.
Publishing has certainly become a more competitive market over the last 10 years, with editorial budgets falling, print readership dropping, and the difficulty that news sites have had in securing paid memberships. This economic reality is driving many changes in the journalistic trade and the news media industry. One such change might be increased competition for readers and more varied news sources come onto the scene. Enter PublishFlow, a web service programmed to watch your editorial back. The PublishFlow API allows you to monitor many news sites at once, tracking things like headlines, top stories, authors and categories.
We news addicts often want to read far more stories than we have time for. Especially for those of us who use Twitter, there are stories flying left and right, and getting lost in them is pretty easy. One possible solution is to read good summaries, which for some stories exist on myriad blogs. Even [...]
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