ryantxr

Social networks are about people and interacting.  What do you do if the people you want to interact with are on different networks or systems? There are more than a few social networks these days. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter are the tier 1 systems.  I would have to throw Yahoo and MySpace in there for good measure.  Then there are a host of secondary platforms like Orkut, Hi5, StatusNet(Identi.ca),  Plurk, Plaxo Pulse, Koornk, Miio.  Then there are intermediaries like FriendFeed, Ping.fm.  I could go on but I think you get the point.

Each of these platforms has some users.  Some have many and some have few.  How then does one interact with all of these platforms?  I'm sure that no one wants to directly interact with all of them all the time.  Imagine having to login to all those sites to post the same message.  And then having to monitor all of them for responses.  If the interaction is kept only within a platform, those on other platforms lose out.

The key then is platform interaction.  This means an API.  I use Tweetdeck.  And this allows me to interact with several platforms at once.  I go to one place and I see all the updates from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in one dashboard.  Ocassionally, I use HootSuite as well, which has similar features.  I never have to post anything directly to FaceBook.  My Tweets go there because FriendFeed reads my Twitter account and posts them there for me.  Talk about a time saver.  All this is possible because these platforms provide an API.  If Plurk did not have an API, I would never use it at all.  There just isn't enough to push me over the edge.

Neal Sample, Yahoo's chief architect for social platforms once told me that if someone is scraping your platform, then provide an API.  The point is to be open. Embrace what others want from you. There is no place for isolation in the modern Internet.

There is one more angle to point out here.  I will use Twitter as an example, but it applies to them all.  Most of the interaction with Twitter is not through its website.  Relatively few people use their web interface.  Users expect a smart phone interface.  It has become the primary interaction.  This makes total sense. Why should I wait until I get home to interact when I can do it from whereever I am?