The evolution of the API, or, the publisher’s dilemma

I love watching the movie The Thing. The film I speak of would be John Carpenter’s 1982 remake, and not the 1951 classic, The Thing from Another World. Eleven men are holed up in an Antarctic science research facility, and come face-to-face with an alien organism buried beneath the ice. The special effects are reminiscent of the best the industry had to offer before the onslaught of digital pictures, but they now border on camp.

If you have yet to watch this movie, it is well worth a rental. Several scenes depict the transformation of the alien life-form into ghastly imitations of creatures across the galaxy. Earth bound animals and humans are thrown into the DNA pool, and grotesque shape-shifting monstrosities are the end result. Amazing how a single (although fictional) cell could mutate into such a complex, and unmanageable beast. Much like the content strewn across the Web today.

Stage One: The Brand

In the beginning was the brand. More than a decade has passed since traditional brands controlled the content prevalent on the Web. Companies could rely on the public trust earned through brick-and-mortar outlets and from paper distribution. This base of consumers was leveraged to strengthen a presence online. Although the brand did not always translate quite so elegantly on the Web, it was still a novel concept to read and shop online with familiar retailers and publishers.

This relationship was short-sited for sure, and when the famed bubble burst, the trust was forever broken. Users turned away from established brands, and the first generation of Web enabled youth came to embrace an undercurrent of new startups. Interesting content, services and products were more acceptable if the brand was fresh, and the ideas untainted by corporate elitists. Eventually this gave rise to a new platform in which these ideas could flourish — the blog.

Stage Two: The Content

It would take some time, but publishers finally realized that users would no longer be bankable on the brand alone. A satisfying experience on a domain was tied inextricably to the uniqueness of content published. Bloggers were providing free thoughts, no subscriptions, and a distraction from casual shopping. Not wanting to be overrun by a renaissance of digital mom-and-pop shops, publishers began to push content, in hopes of drawing in both advertising revenue and new customers.

The result has been an information superhighway packed with hungry, rabid dogs (myself included). In a sense, the sheer force and magnitude of content established publishers produced clogged the system. Videos, reviews, news, commentary and community eventually merged to form social networks to alleviate the stress involved with searching out and enjoying this content. Link farms grew bumper crops, and the RSS reader is now a mainstay. However, the content is once again reaching critical mass.

Stage Three: The API

Even though content is now neatly organized into digestible chunks, it remains difficult to sift through the fluff. Once adding a significant entertainment or educational value, it now has a greater purpose — it can can actually aid in everyday life decisions. These decisions are best made by gathering information from multiple sources, and relationships between content are evolving and coalescing.

Developers are being given permission, where it was once taboo, to use this content in mashups through the assistance of an API. Since brand integrity has almost entirely dissolved, publishers are hoping to stay connected with users by providing a completely open context to absorb information. If they can be known as a primary source provider, trust can be built, and being identified with a “free” movement can hopefully bring the masses back to the domain.

Unfortunately, this intermingling of content is only a stay of execution. The API has generated enough interest to keep publishers busy spinning content onto platform after platform. Yet, there will remain a fog among users, and again we may no longer desire to search endlessly for what we need now. Instead, personal software user agents will become a searching ombudsman for us. Based upon criteria we specify, our agents will learn to siphon the content — we will no longer come to it, but it will come to us.

Stage Four: The Agent

This, of course, is a prediction. The agent is certainly not a radical concept, but it does spark some interesting conversation. If we developed and trusted agents instead of publishers, would they serve us, or is there a possibility we would serve them? The time spent customizing and enhancing our agent might very well be a substitute for the time spent previously searching for content. At what instant this drastic change might take place is unknown, but some say it is upon the advent of the Semantic Web. As some of you know, I disagree.

To truly understand the arrival of intelligent user agents, there has to be a willingness to accept the diminished significance of the word “intelligence”. You also have to move beyond the search engine analogy. Your user agent is not Google on your desktop, or in the palm of your hand. It is software that builds an index of your personality traits based upon your preferences, and updates a ridiculously complicated irreplaceable algorithm.

The affect on publishers could be devastating. Content would be analyzed, dissected, and reformatted. Ads could be stripped, needless information removed, and both the brand and the domain would disintegrate. These user agents would understand our habits, even adjusting to our fickle tastes, and possibly suggest we journey into subject matter that will compliment our interests. We can only wait and see.

• Posted by Brian
• September 20th, 2007