A few days ago Facebook officially opened-up its entire platform to web developers.

I visited the Facebook headquarters a few months ago while in Palo Alto as part of Elite Retreat…so I was tipped off to the announcement, but I thought I’d share my two cents because I see this as a very significant announcement.

One company (even if you are Google or Facebook) can only be so innovative. In a typical corporate environment innovation is restricted to the company’s employees and partners. As CEO of a fast growing internet marketing agency and affiliate network I can tell you there aren’t enough hours in the day to innovate.

So what are businesses to do?

The answer is open up your platform (aka, technology) to outside developers via an API.

It’s been several years since I became a student of API’s (Application Program Interfaces). In fact, I was sort of thrown in the fire a few years back (2005 or 2006 I believe) on the topic of API’s when I was asked by Chris Sherman to present on the topic at SES Toronto. I survived the presentation and have been intrigued by the topic ever since. BTW – it was at that conference that I became friends with Jeremy Schoemaker who later became a great friend and even participated in my wedding as a groomsman.

API’s allow you to interact with other technologies in a seemless, automated fashion. For instance, let’s say you are an affiliate marketer and run reports throughout the day to evaluate and optimize your return on investment. Logging-in to your account everytime is quite time consuming – you could probably use your time better by building new campaigns and cashing checks. Well, with API access to an affiliate network like Pepperjam Network you can build an application that allows you to interact with PJN’s reporting system – no need to log-in all the time and pull data. This is just one example – once a technology is open (like Facebook just did) you ultimately have unfettered power to build upon the platform. It’s pretty ingenious.

In the case of Facebook we are talking about the fastest growing social network in the world. Now that Facebook has opened up the ability for developers to build applications around your profile page, wall, pictures, etc. there will be hundreds of new innovations by developers that don’t work or get paid by Facebook. As a user you’ll benefit because you’ll be able to do things with new applications and pieces of software that wouldn’t have existed anytime soon BUT FOR Facebook opening up its API.

I know that this all sounds pretty techie and you may be thinking…this won’t effect me.

You are wrong.

Do you use Twitter?

Did you know that 70% of Twitter users don’t use the Twitter.com site to Tweet?

This is the case because Twitter opened up its platform via an API before it ever gained the type of usage that it currently enjoys.

Developers from all over the world have built cool apps like Tweet Deck, Tweetie, and Twitterific using Twitters API. As a result we (the users) are able to Tweet using our cell phone, through an iPhone app, or through a masterful deck that integrates Twitter Tweets and Facebook comments. Pretty cool stuff.

While I’m talking about API’s and applications….there may be no more powerful example than the Apple iPhone.

You may not have known it, but the only reason that there is an iPhone APP Store is because Apple opened up its API on the iPhone, which enabled innovative developers from all over the world to build applications (by interacting with iPhone’s platform) that make the iPhone experience that more amazing. Playing all kinds of cool games, reading the New York Times (great app), downloading stock quotes (eTrade Mobile Pro), reading blogs (TechCrunch, Mashable, etc.), reading books (the Kindle app), iFart (my pal Joel Comm) and many more are available BECAUSE Apple opened up it’s API to the world.

Now Facebook has done this.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see all the new and innovative Facebook apps that are developed over the coming days and weeks that will allow us to connect with our FB friends.

API’s rule!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under pepperjam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.