Mashery

I would like to gently remind our readers about our upcoming Business of APIs Conference. Check out the event website here (www.apiconference.com) for full details and see below for a special offer.

Three quick points on this conference:

1) This is our third time holding this event. We have tailored this event based on feedback from the last two events. We get APIs and we get what folks like you want from an event like this – case studies, case studies, case studies! We really believe that if you are in the business of APIs, this half day is time well spent. If you are in or around the Bay area or will be in town on November 3rd, read on.

2) Check out the speakers below. This is a world class list of folks from big business and big media. Our speakers will detail what they have done with APIs to reinvent their businesses. You will learn how and why they chose to execute an API strategy, what they expect the return to be, and how they are actively measuring success. This is real-world advice and lessons learned from your peers who have executed API strategies and deployments and are willing to share their experiences.

Confirmed speakers:

Michele Azar, Vice President of Emerging Channels, Best Buy
Marc Frons, CTO, New York Times
Quentin Hardy, Sr. Editor and Silicon Valley Bureau Chief of Forbes
Mike Hart, Director of Engineering, Web API, Netflix
Allen Hurff, Vice President of Engineering, MySpace
Daniel Jacobson, Director of Application Development, NPR Digital Media
Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery
Aaron Patzer, Founder and CEO, Mint.com
Heidi Tucker, Vice President, Business Development, Hoovers

3) Sign-up now and save a few dollars – $96 to be exact. I would like to extend a special offer to my blog readers. From now until November 2nd, sign up here and use the discount code MashBlog and you’ll save $96 on registration.

Come learn why the static web is dead and be at the forefront of the Web’s Industrial Revolution.

Traction in the enterprise software space can be summed up (in a somewhat oversimplified fashion) by determining how many people are actually using your product. Net new sales is not an accurate barometer due to the potential shelf ware component for enterprise software. Like it or not folks, some of our stuff is bought and never used, sad but true.

So, other than surveys from those industry analyst types. How do we determine traction beyond just looking at sales numbers? A non-comprehensive approach to determining traction could be to look at these three factors:

1) Maintenance revenue. Yes, I just said don’t look at sales, but maintenance revenue is different, if customers are paying maintenance then they are actually using the product,

2) Public case studies, press mentions and the like. If a company is willing to talk publicly about what they are doing or, say, be mentioned in a blog, that’s a pretty good indication of use,

and the one I’d like to highlight here,

3) New product features derived from customer requests and requirements. This is the best one in my opinion, as this not only implies use, but adds current and active use today within the infrastructure of the enterprise. The company is using and thinking about your product and wants improvements done to it so that they can use it more. That, to me, is a great traction indicator.

We here at Mashery take our customer requests and requirements very seriously. The information we glean from customers “out in the field” is invaluable. We, like other startups, can whiteboard and attempt to predict the next great feature on our own. But, our customers (and yours, btw) will tell you if you let them. In the spirit of listening to our customers, I’d like to highlight some of the recent features we released in September. All of these were in some part developed as a result of direct customer contact.

We like to call this release of Mashery, SOAR (SAML, OAuth, Reporting). It’s catchy, it shows progress and traction. Plus, it’s a really great visual and marketing loves acronyms. The details:

· Support for SAML implementations.
· Support for OAuth
· Reporting 2.0 which includes:
- Providing trend data
- Detailed statistics by developer
- Performance management information
- Method level activity

We have a few customers that are already using these new features, including Netflix. Netflix is our first OAuth customer. Netflix and Mashery have combined to produce the Netflix API and the Netflix Developer Network.

The Netflix API and the Netflix Developer Network:

· Netflix provides more than 8 million subscribers access to more than 100,000 DVD titles plus a growing library of more than 12,000 choices that can be watched instantly on their PCs.
· The Netflix API allows access to data for all of those titles as well as access on a user’s behalf to manage their movie queue. The Netflix API is free and allows commercial use.

One last traction indicator – developers using the product to do new and cool things. Two implementations have already been produced using the Netflix API:

1) Pyxis Mobile has released the SmartFlicks, Netflix on BlackBerry application. SmarFlicks lets BlackBerry users manage their Netflix account and read movie reviews and news from their mobile device.

2) For the iPhone, check out what Adrian Cockcroft is doing to make OAuth work on his iPhone.

‘Tis the season….for politics that is. As I realize today that we are under 3 weeks to the election, a question occurred to me. “How many people are running for President?” There has got to be more than two, right?  We are an open party system, that suggests that there should be some openness to who is vying for the right to run the country.  Well, there are over 350 people running for President of the United States. Wow. My guess was about 40 – not even close.

Isn’t it expensive to run for President?  In these tough economic times, where the heck did these people get the money to run for President? Glad you asked. Take a look at what the New York Times just released – a campaign finance data API. The Times Campaign Finance API is designed to quickly retrieve totals for a particular candidate, see aggregates by ZIP code or state, or get details on a particular donor. How very cool and timely, considering tonight’s final debate.

The bigger picture view of the Times openning their campaign finance data is that there is certainly more to come. Imagine the repositories of data points that reside in a major newspapers archives.  Proceed through the sections of the paper and consider all of the content available over time. This is a big deal for Big Media and open content.

The final products (applications, mashups, web sites, etc.) that could come out of Big Media providing open content API access to their historical data are enormous. Pick one of the major newspapers in your part of the world and take a look at the sections, a quick review here shows: News, Business, Sports, Lifestyle, Arts and Entertainment, Things to Do, Travel, Cars, Jobs, Homes. Now imagine that all the current and historical articles, data points, pictures, reference material, etc. for every bit of reported news behind those sections is made available through an API. Wow. Big media becomes a very important open content resource very quickly.