In contrast to our previous post, where the focus is to REMOVE middle men, this article makes it clear that USING a middle man is a key to success. Startups take note: BECOMING a middle man is more likely (even more profitable!). Rather than having to hire expensive developers for weeks and months at a time, startups can now bind together a collection of APIs from dozens of different providers in a few days, and have an entirely new product or delivery mechanism on their hands: - Why make a delivery app for your restaurant when you can just partner with Seamless? - Why make your own PeaPod or FreshDirect when you can just bind your store to Instacart? API = Application Programming Interface. Basically, it’s an under-the-hood direct connection to a system. It IS the middle man. YOUR program talks to HIS program, which references data from HER program, all via each program’s API. API’s are used to tie together the Internet. Facebook is a giant jumble of disparate systems, all tied together with APIs. Facebook Messenger, your wall, each game that’s up there, your photos, other people’s videos, all the advertising (and lets face it, there’s lots of that), it’s all a widely spread out and independently operated pool of tools, standards and methods. But they communicate via their APIs, and deliver that unified one-pane-of-glass look to you. Your brick and mortar business does not need to completely rebuild and reinvent itself to get modernized--just be open to exploring the wonderful world of APIs!
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 18:29:13 +0000
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