With Microsoft charging for Bing Search API and Google doing the same for high-volume Maps queries, 2012 is shaping up as the year the API graduates from cool technology to bona fide product. Increasingly, APIs are powering business models, revenue streams, and brand reach. From Klout to Instagram, at virtually every hot startup an API is central to the business plan.
Our API directory now includes 134 travel APIs. The newest is the TakeABreak API. The most popular, in terms of mashups, is the Kayak API. We list 12 Kayak mashups. Below you’ll find some more stats from the directory, including the entire list of travel APIs.
As we put a bow on 2011 and welcome 2012, it’s a good time to reflect on what has been a year of tremendous growth for ProgrammableWeb. We now list over 4,700 APIs and 6,300 mashups in our directory. Our team continues to grow in order to bring you all of this new content along with the latest news and trends about the web as a platform. All of this is made possible by our sponsors and partners. We take this time to say thank you and offer you this chance to learn more about the companies that make our site possible.
There is no doubt that there is a lot of money to be made in travel. Heck, travel (globally) accounts for over 12% of the World’s GDP. That is some serious coin. You have an incredible idea for a web application that is going to make travellers love you and make you rich at the same time. The question is… who should I connect with and why? Here is a quick run down on the pros and cons of connecting with the likely, and not so likely, hotel distribution partners.
This past week 16 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 35 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include 8coupons, Agendize Action, Avvo, Expedia, Google Distance Matrix, Google Plus, Google Sidewiki, Hoiio SMS, Hoiio Voice , Mendeley, PLoS Search and Xa.ly. The most often used APIs this week are Amazon eCommerce, Google Maps and Twilio. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Mapping (6 APIs, 9 mashups), Social (4 APIs, 6 mashups) and Telephony (4 APIs, 5 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
Here at ProgrammableWeb, we strive to be your resource for news, information and trends about the web as a platform. Our first-rate staff of writers and editors is only made possible through the support of our great sponsors and partners. We’re pleased to offer you this chance to learn more about the companies that make our site possible.
If there is a segment that is ripe for integration it is travel. APIs in the travel segment have been around for a very long time. In fact, some of the earliest APIs are based on Electronic Data Interchange, which dates back to the 1960s. Granted many of these connections are highly complex enterprise only integrations, it is a history that should bode well for modern day integrations, should it not? Despite a long history of interconnectedness, much of the travel space still remains behind closed doors. The major global distribution systems, represented by Sabre, Travelport, and Amadeus all offer powerful APIs of their own, but their commercial requirements tend to be out of the league of most application developers.
In spite of the limitations the travel industry has effectively self imposed, there still exists many opportunities to monetize sites using travel APIs. There are several types of APIs available in the travel space. Most are transactional and some are content driven. Let’s take a look a broad categorization of available travel APIs.
Travel reservation site Expedia starting working on its Expedia API back in 2009, according to the changelog. It has three APIs, covering hotels, flights and cars. Don’t be shy. Expedia has been expecting you. The Expedia developer site has all the warmth and care of a fine bed and breakfast. They clearly want to invite you in, make you comfortable, and get your development project of the ground. Though they do have a couple hoops to jump through, as well.
This week we had 41 new APIs added to our API directory including a digital watermarking service, link bookmarking service, blogging service, movie information and reviews database, spelling correction service, helpdesk service and rss feed reader.
We covered some of these in more detail in these posts:
Below is more detail on each of these 41 new APIs.
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