Mashery

“The CEO said we have to have a mobile presence this year!”

“The board wants an iphone app asap!”

Are these familiar commandments running through your hallowed halls these days?

Mobilized web sites – they’re fast and easy to do.  iPhone apps – they’re beautiful, but need to be maintained and are not cross-platform.  Sound complicated?  Wonder where to start?  Here are some thoughts on any mobile strategy.

1. Ask the execs, what is success?

“At the end of 2010 what do you want to see in terms of a mobile presence?”  (Is it the number of devices, users, downloads or revenue?)

2. How are you defining ‘mobile’?

A. The number of iPhone Apps
B. All smart phones
C. Any mobile phone
D. GPS devices, Kindles, iPads, DVD Players, TV’s or any future screens that a user may consume data from

If your answer is ‘D’, you’re on the right track!  The digital channel is fragmented unlike any other channel we’ve ever sold through and it’s getting more and more so.

Tom Friedman said the world is flat.  I say the first run at ecommerce, and more broadly the Internet channel in the early 90’s, was flat.  With all the new devices, the internet channel is 4D.  Try graphing your user segments, devices, social networking sites and where your product is available and you’ll feel the complexity in your gut.  “How in the world am I going to be where all of my customers are – front and center?

Step back and think about what has NOT changed – the need to be where the consumer is.  In the 20^th century, retail companies designed teams that knew how to find desirable locations, i.e., where the people were: main street, the mall, on the way to work, etc. They built new storefronts, cost effectively and fast.

Today, the way you get to where the consumers are is by opening up an API that provides programmatic access to your underlying services, data and content.  That way anyone (e.g., internal developers, existing and potential partners, business developers) can come and get appropriate access to your data in a language they understand.

You will cut development costs, increase the number of people that can build for you, and deliver solutions to market much faster.

This is exactly how eBay and Amazon became two of the most successful ecommerce vendors in the world in the mid-90’s.  They understood the need for API’s long before anyone else and reaped the rewards.

This will take guts to socialize in your organization.  You need to be a change agent.  You need to have the capital to walk up to your boss or executive team and say:

“If we develop mobile applications on what we have today, we can get you an iPhone app in a month.  But then everything you want to do after that is going to take just as long and be just as expensive and we’ll never be able to accelerate our development.  The alternative is to take a deep breath, partner with IT and develop the APIs we need.  It might take a few months, but after that, we’ll be able to do the following”:

The following is from a mobile app developer:

1. Decrease time-to-market and increase budget savings:

“When clients have an API (like Hoovers) we are able to build a mobile app for them in about 1/2 the time and about 1/3 of the cost as compared to internal Web Service or legacy feeds, which generally need more customization on our end.”

2. Better user experience because of an API:

“When clients have an API, we’re able to cache all the data and anticipate the next clicks for information they might need. The user experience for Web service and feeds is adding another round trip for the additional information request = waiting, waiting, waiting. It doesn’t make a big difference on a desktop, but it makes a big difference for user experience on mobile devices.”

3. Richer features available in mobile apps supported with an API:

“When clients have an API, we’re able to add on valuable third-party features (mashups) to create a new mobile app that features not only the functionality of the new client API, but also of other third party APIs.”  (These are the “unintended and unpredictable benefits” a company can enjoy when launching an API, thus extending the reach of their data into other mobile apps.)

4. New Read/Write capabilities with an API:

“When clients have an API that supports read and write functionality, user approved data on their mobile device can be updated in real-time – an ability not often found with data entry completed on desktop machines.

With an API, you’ll can also integrate with payment engines, social media sites and develop applications to drive conversion rates through deeper, more meaningful, interactions.

An API is right up there with duct tape and Swiss Army knives – one of the most useful tools in the history of mankind.

For the second year running Mashery and its proud sponsors provide the ultimate lounge for technologists and API professionals to learn about new business projects, network with big (and small) API providers, and, of course, play!

Start every day of SXSW Interactive the right way. The Lounge will host a Bloody Mary bar, Tech Happy Hours, coffee & beverage service, and dedicated wifi. Visitors will get first-hand insights on successful revenue-driving app projects (and what brands are asking for). So developers stop by, take a load off and relax in our comfy space, and apply your dev skills to real projects, with real rewards.

Mashery customers will let their community do the talking for them, and speak from experience. From the Best Buy Remix blog -

Alex Stone (@al3xstone or @superdvdrobot via Twitter), the creator of Super DVD Robot! will be on hand to demo his application and discuss his use of the Remix API for you. It’s one of the more creative uses we’ve seen of our data yet, and he does it all on his own time which I think is awesome.

Come watch other API demos and talk to API product teams every afternoon in our Geek Sideshow demo area, featuring APIs from CafePress, Netflix, Hallmark, Billboard, and New York Times, including online browser and iPhone Instantwatcher apps by developer Daniel Choi, desktop apps by Microsoft Silverlight, plus Xbox 360 gaming console app.

Circus Mashimus will be open from 9:30AM-6PM (daily March 12-16), located in Room #3, first level near the Screenburn Arcade.

It’s 2010 – disruption is everywhere. The pace of technology is quicker and faster than ever before. News of iTablets for touch-screen magazines alerts us that we’re living in a multi-channel, multi-platform, multi-device-kinda world. So how do we keep up with innovation while being mindful of resources and cost-savings?

Read on at Read Write Web to get tips on API platform planning, defining success, and ROI metrics. This is the first in a series of ‘Develop Community 101′ articles, aimed at helping you understand and enrich your API community, and empower your developers for success.

San Francisco, CA, February 25, 2010—Mashery, the leading provider of API (Application Programming Interface) enablement and management services, announced today that it has raised $5.5 million in series C funding led by Cisco. Existing investors Formative Ventures, First Round Capital and 406 Ventures also participated in the round. The company will use the financing to expand its product offering, sales, and marketing operations to meet the growing demand for APIs in key vertical markets and increase its leadership position in this space.

“Cisco is a long-standing leader in Internet networking and will clearly play an integral role in future innovation to enable new video, mobile and cloud services,” said Oren Michels, CEO and Founder of Mashery. “To have Cisco as an investor is not only exciting but also validates the critical role that APIs play in transforming  the way business is conducted online as companies move beyond the Web site.”

Mashery provides on-demand API infrastructure enablement and management that helps organizations leverage their information assets to create new partnerships, extend their brand and tap into wider distribution networks. Mashery has more than 40,000 developers in its network. Mashery’s experience and comprehensive on-demand solution allows organizations to get web services initiatives up and running quickly and provides developer, community and management tools to ensure successful performance.

“APIs have the potential to transform the way organizations do business online in much the same way Web sites once transformed how people receive, consume and interact with information. Mashery is at the center of this rapidly evolving market, driving phenomenal momentum for the company and the broader API movement,” said Josh Kopelman, Chairman of the Board for Mashery and Managing Partner of First Round Capital.

APIs facilitate content and data sharing between communities and applications, enabling developers to create applications for mobile phones, social media sites, Web-enabled devices, gaming consoles or affiliate websites that can help organizations drive sales, broker partnerships and build brand. According to Gartner, by 2014, 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will offer access to portions of enterprise data and business process to customers and collaborators using a public API conforming to Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA ) principles.*

About Mashery

Mashery was founded in 2006 and has built an impressive list of clients that include Best Buy, Netflix, international news service Reuters, the New York Times, online real estate site Trulia, online directory Whitepages.com, Hoover’s, Nielsen owned Billboard magazine and more. To learn more about Mashery, visit www.mashery.com

*Gartner, “Case Study: Best Buy Extends Its Reach With a Public WOA API,” Eric Knipp, September 2009

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Media Contact:

Kathleen Gratehouse
(415) 963-4174 ext. 2
kathleen (at) bordergratehouse.com