Mashery

Allen Hurff, SVP Engineering at MySpace, was the second speaker in the Business of APIs Conference. He focused on the importance of openness and standards.

MySpace

Though it has only been in business for a short period of time, MySpace has moved rapidly from a walled garden to a strong proponent of open API exchange. Allen figures the long-term goal should be to “bring karma and reputation layers to APIs.” The building blocks are already there.

For example, with OpenID, users can use one identity and seamlessly move from login to login, site to site. The Old World approach of a walled garden with a moat between social networks and social sites. The New World approach uses open standards and API exchange to enable “The Social Social Network, where social networks talk to each other.

Allen explained that Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, Google, and others are building the new Open Stack. Standards for user activity, profiles, authentication, social graphing, reputation, and content to support the Open Stack already exist, and are rapidly improving. Those companies that will take advantage of the new paradigm are those that:

• recognize that the Web is increasingly open and social,
• don’t reinvent the wheel,
• use existing platforms, and
• understand the distributed nature of the Open Stack