It doesn’t matter where you turn these days on the web or in the tech blogosphere but you are almost guaranteed to here something about API this and API that. Everything it seems has to have some form of an API available for developers to build applications; whether they be desktop or web based, on top of. The impression that is being given is that without an API you will never be seriously considered as a viable Web 2.0 start-up or even a company looking for a web presence that is trying to hook into the whole social networking scene.

This whole API thing was a subject that Marshall Kirkpatrick looked at in his post on ReadWriteWeb. In the post he asked a bunch of folks at the Web 2.0 Expo what they thought was coming next after this seemingly blind acceptance of ubiquitous APIs. The answers he found broke down to the following categories

• Business models
• Filtering for information overload
• Standards and interoperability
• Outsourcing API services
• Backlash

I found it interesting that he included the idea of there being a backlash against this supposed universal acceptance of APIs but it makes sense if you question whether APIs are truly the end all be all. As more than a few of the people Marshall talked to at the conference suggested that there could be a move away “from the frothy wave of ‘Me Too’ APIs and platform announcements”. As David Janes; creator of Onaswarm, is quoted by Marshall as saying

“How about a return to using well-known protocols (as opposed to APIs) for doing well-understood tasks, i.e. publishing and posting data. E.g. RSS/MetaweblogAPI or Atom/APP…It’s insane…I’ve had more than my fill of working with these APIs.” When I pinged him to confirm those lines - he said that it would more accurately explain how he felt about the APIs he’s been working with if there were some obscenities sprinkled into his quote. That from a man who has put his hand into the dragon’s mouth. If you will.

This whole issue of having to deal with multiple APIs from the developer stand point is easily illustrated with the current drive to develop clients that deal with Twitter and FriendFeed from within a single application. Whether it be within a single application or a multi-window application the problems are still the same - having to deal with two totally separate APIs. This is mind bending enough as it is but what happens when another service comes along that the users want included within that same application framework.

And that is the problem with trying to live within an API based world - everyone will have their own API that at some point are expect to co-exist within the framework of user friendly programs. Then there is the concept of APIs that will talk to other APIs such as is the case with FriendFeed and Disqus. One has to wonder if the point will come where we need an API to manage all the other various APIs scattered around the web.

Then though we get to the whole thing of monetizing these businesses that are so dependant on having APIs. This was the question that Alexander van Elsas’s looked at in his post on the subject today - a must read post in my opinion. For him this freemium business model is nothing more than a dead end that leads to walled gardens and advertisements. Or as he also puts it - it leads to nothing

In most cases it sounds great but leads to nothing. Or as Wired puts it, the “I hate Facebook” club is growing fast. It leads to customer lock-in, and network value instead of user value. Customer lock in sounds great for the gardener, but obviously customer freedom sounds much better to me. Business models that leverage customer value are always to prefer. The problem with this concept is that most web entrepreneurs and investors are always looking at a business plan to see if it can become the next Facebook or Google. That means that it needs the ambition to rule the world. As a consequence getting lots of users on board is more important than delivering user value.

Like Alexander I have a big problem with this freemium or freenomics that is the all important drawing card of all the Web 2.0 start-up companies and established companies trying to improve their web presence.

As cool as offering free products might make your company sound when your only real option to profitability is a buy-out by a larger profitable company with a real business model is that it is like a bunch of player around a casino craps table. The problem with this is that the only real losers are the users that have invested their time and energy into making your business look appetizing to a larger shark in the sea.

It is the users that are left stranded in the middle of some deadpool and feeling more than a little used. Sure they got something for free so they shouldn’t expect too much in return - or should they? Or how about the start-up that gets bought by a larger company and then left abandoned for whatever reason. Once again it is the users that are being left in the lurch but then I guess their time an energy isn’t worth anything once the dollars have been forked over.

The problem with this is that at some point the users are going to say enough. They will want something more than just to be the fodder upon which a small few are continually making millions as they flip from start-up to start-up. At some point though the Law of TANSTAAFL will kick in because the users will have reached their limits and realize that sometimes paying for a service even if it is only a slightly enhanced version of the service they are using. At least then the users will feel that they are providing an incentive for the company to build out a solid product that is more than just chum for the sharks to feed on.

Conversation Tags: API, web 2.0, start-ups, freemium, freenomics