'Net Features : api

9 Spectacular Social APIs

Michael Garrity — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:50:00 GMT

Like it or not, the Web is an increasingly social place, and in order to successfully market a brand and reach out to consumers, utilizing the various social media resources at your disposal is quickly becoming an essential part of running a website.

Fortunately, developers have access to a number of social media application programming interfaces (APIs) that can help them integrate the services of major social media services into their websites or applications. This is particularly beneficial for content providers, marketers or even e-commerce companies that may have share-worthy content or products.

So, if you’re looking to improve your website’s digital social life, maybe it’s time to consider one (or more) of these nine spectacular social APIs.

Facebook Graph API
As the biggest name in social media, it only seems right that you should try to incorporate as much Facebook data into your social endeavors as possible. The Graph API is the primary way that data is retrieved or posted to the social network. This API makes it easy to connect with users on your website or application and offer them a more personalized experience, as well as the ability to Like and share pages on your site or app. It can also provide site registration features and a Facebook-based commenting system.

Twitter Embedded Tweets
Using this particular API, you can take any tweet from your Twitter account and, as the name states, embed it directly into the content of your website, or a page on your website. Moreover, the tweets will display with expanded media (e.g. photos, videos, articles summaries, etc.) and real-time retweet and favorite counts. Plus, when the tweets are embedded, they will become interactive on the Web page, allowing visitors to follow the author, reply, retweet or favorite them without ever leaving the page.

Bitly Social Data APIs
One of the most popular ways to share content on social networks (especially Twitter) is by using a link-shortening service, such as Bitly, which is wildly popular with a number of Web users. In fact, millions of people shorten, share and click on Bitly links every day, and that can be a lot of information to keep track of. That’s why the company released the Bitly Social Data APIs, which provide direct access to the best available content that has been shared by users across various social networks.

YouTube Data API
With this API, developers can build a program that performs many of the operations available on YouTube.com, including the ability to search for videos, retrieve standard feeds, view related content, authenticate users to upload videos, modify playlists and much more to allow sites or apps to create deep integrations with YouTube and its content.

Yelp API
The API from the local search and online review service lets users add functionality to their app or website that will help users find up to the 40 best results for geographic searches, sort the results by the best query, rating or distance match, limit the results to only businesses offering Yelp Deals, and identify whether or not a business has been claimed on Yelp already. This allows developers to give users a full Yelp experience without have to visit Yelp.com.

Flickr API
Images and social media seem to go hand-in-hand these days, and with more than 5 billion hosted photos, Flickr is one of the leading image services on the Web today. All of those pictures, and the Flickr community around them, create a lot of rich data, which is now accessible to developers through the Flickr API. Developers can use the API to organize, store and display their digital images, and even integrate them with other social apps. Plus, the API allows them to converse, share and curate their content with others.

Google+ API
Thought it may not have the name brand recognition of Facebook or Twitter, Google+ is still an incredibly useful social network in some circles (get it?). If you’re looking to tap into those clusters of users, you can integrate the Google+ API into your app or website, which allows users to connect with one another for “maximum engagement” and use Google+ features directly from your site or app.

Ning API
Ning is a small platform upon which users can build their own niche social networks, and many brands have turned to Ning to create social networks specifically for their companies. For those who have used Ning to establish their own curated networks, they can utilize the Ning API to take advantage of all of the data that it creates.

foursquare API
The popular check-in based social media service foursquare was a major factor in the rise of geo-location-based marketing. As such, it has compiled a hearty amount of data from its mobile applications. This API gives developers access to all of that information so that they can display public check-ins on their websites, allow users to check in from their apps or websites, aggregate data from similar locations to identify their target audiences and much more.

The Latest Google Drive API is All About Collaboration

Michael Garrity — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week, Google launched its Google Drive Realtime API to allow developers to utilize Google Drive’s real-time collaboration features in their own applications.

According to Google, this API is meant to offer collaborative versions of popular data objects, like maps, strings, lists and JSON values, as well as automatically synchronizing and storing any modifications to these objects. Developers can even add their own custom objects and references.

Plus, since the API will track the presence of collaborators, the developers can alert users when other people join and leave, as well as when they make changes to a document.

As with Drive, the Realtime API will enact any local changes that take place when a user is in the developer’s application, and these will be immediately reflected in the local document via the use of operational transformation. In other words, local apps will continue to be responsive, even if they’re running on high-latency networks.

In addition, Google has opened up the Drive Realtime API Playground, so that developers can go in and test out their applications. To use the Drive Realtime API and gain access to the Playground, users must first sign up for the original Google Drive API.

Use Bitly Social Data for Content Marketing

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The buzz among marketers and Web developers this week has in great part revolved around Bitly's public release of its new social data API.

The amount of information that is shortened, shared and ultimately clicked by Web users is absolutely staggering. With the new Bitly API, it's finally possible to access the content that is actively being shared across all of the social networks.

Bitly’s API provides three types of functionality to access - real-time search, attention spikes and metadata about the URLs being shared.

- REAL-TIME: Developers can run a qiery and retrieve the top URLs and stories for the query (which can be very specific words or include filtering criteria)

- ATTENTION SPIKES: Bitly’s bursts API returns current phrases that are receiving a “burst in attention beyond what may be expected. Bursts automatically aggregates multiple articles about the same topic.

- URL Metadata: Developers can also query on a URL basis for keywords, topics, content, language and location relevance.

So how can this information be used for content marketing? Well, when you know what’s trending (and when you’re actively listening and monitoring social data in real time for attention spikes, the choices you make in terms of what content you’ll publish will naturally be better –meaning, you’ll won’t guess wrong because those decisions are rooted in empirical evidence (data).

Expect many social media management solutions to integrate with Bitly’s API in the coming months.

8 Awesome Advertising APIs

Michael Garrity — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Web businesses use application programming interfaces (APIs) for all sorts of things, depending on their unique needs and the demands of their customers. These interfaces allow website developers to easily migrate their software to different platforms, support multiple operating system versions and offer more functionality than system calls.

APIs cover a wide range of categories and can provide routines, protocols and tools for everything from back-end modifications and payment processors to blogs and social media; in other words, APIs cover a lot of ground. Any Web professional could probably find one that will enhance his or her business.

However, because of the sheer number of competitors out there (a figure that grows on a daily basis), no company can be successful in today’s online environment without advertising. It doesn’t really matter what they do or which industry they operate in, at some point, they’re going to need to get their name in front of interested consumers.

Well, there’s an API for that! Keep reading to learn about eight awesome advertising APIs that each uniquely help Web businesses reach out to consumers on the ‘Net.

Smadex
The mobile advertising service Smadex allows advertisers and publishers to put their ads into mobile apps and content. This API lets developers access Smadex functionality and then integrate it into other applications, which includes integrating ads into content, retrieving ad information and managing account information.

Ad Server Solutions
Not surprisingly, Ad Server Solutions gives publisher, advertisers, agencies and networks ad serving solutions, as well as an integrated platform for advertising campaign management. This allows users to plan, buy, optimize and analyze their campaigns from within a single platform.

Enthuse
It seems like one of the best ways to lure in consumers on the Web these days is to reward them for just paying attention to you, which is why gamification services have become so popular over the last few years. One such “fan loyalty” service is Enthuse, which allows brands, teams and companies to reward their fans with prizes and offer them exclusive promotions. Now you can cash in on this trend with the Enthuse API, which gives developer access to integrate Enthuse functionality with other applications.

Voodoo.com Domain Parking
With Voodoo.com, Web pros can make money off their domains, as the platform helps them manage their domain portfolios and optimize their domains to display relevant landing pages and advertising. The platform provides an assortment of tools, such as an ad provider, one- and two-click landers, customizable layouts and this API, which is free and provides access to all of Voodoo.com’s functionality.

SodaHead
If you’re unfamiliar with SodaHead, it’s an opinion-based online social community platform that aggregates online news stories and events for users, in addition to a providing a polling platform and methods for marketers to reach out to its user base. The API gives up access to single polls, multiple polls and the ability to cast a vote by Poll ID and/or Answer ID.

Sendori
Sendori makes it possible to selectively reroute URLs that have been directly entered into an address bar by catching common typos or URL variants and sending the user to their desired site. Not only does this help webmasters ensure that users land on their site, but it also protects consumers from potential malware attacks. By using URL rerouting for a specific advertising campaign, publishers and marketers can send traffic to their intended promotional messages, thus increasing the value of their paid advertising efforts. Sendori’s API supports targeted ad campaigns and the ability to manage traffic sent to campaign-specific URLs, as well as supporting the grouping of separate ads for common management. That’s not all though, as this feature-rich API also provides thorough reports on ad performance and related traffic and various administrative functions (e.g. budgeting advertising expenses).

PosterOven
Not the most visually creative person in the world? That’s fine, because you don’t have to be with PosterOven, which provides multiple templates and designs that help users create their own PDF posters using their social media information or QR codes. The API lets developers integrate this functionality into existing applications, allowing users to populate templates, create and display posters.

InviteBox
InviteBox is a neat and easy way for online businesses to design and launch social referral programs, allowing them to immediately reward customers for sharing their site via various social channels after reaching a specific sharing goal with coupons, promo codes, download files, access to “locked” features or any other customizable treat that they can come up with. They can even set up promotional contests that have customers compete to get the most referrals. Using this JavaScript API, users can create their own customized rewards and reward conditions, and the Reward callback API can issue server-to-server calls when customers make posts to social channels, when referrals visit their site or when someone completes a referral goal.

14 New-ish API’s for Developer Inspiration

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:30:00 GMT

The use of third-party services within applications is absolutely skyrocketing. If your app isn’t connected to or integrated with the features of other leading apps, count on your Web or mobile app getting about as much attention as a buggy whip.

In this issue of Website Magazine’s Design and Development Digest, let’s look at a few API’s worthy of inclusion in your next project. We’re not going into detail on these specific API’s (remember, this is only about “inspiration”) so instead, just think of all the myriad possibilities you could achieve with one or more of those listed below.

API’s to integrate advertsing, survey functionality, big data analysis, learning and more are included below. If there is an API that you believe deserves our attention and some exposure with our audience, let us know in the comments section below!

Launchbit - Email Advertising Network

Integrate functionality such as accessing ad information, retrieving zones, codes and statuses.

Craigslist - Bulk Posting

Provides an interface for submitting multiple posts in a single request.

Chartboost - App Promotion Platform

Platform for developers to monetize apps through suggested alternative apps.

AffiliateSpice - Content Monetization

Platform that converts standard links to affiliate links.

Satisfeo - Survey Functionality

Collects responses from app users after interacting with functions.

30Loops - Infrastructure Development

Offers integration functionality for developers looking to connect backend resources and deployment tools.

Google BigQuery - Large Dataset Querying

Run SQL-like queries against large datasets – best for interactive analysis.

Viral Ninjas - Viral User Acquisition Platform

Integrates various features of the viral marketing platform into other apps.

PipeDrive - Sales Management

Enables developers to access Popedrive functions into their own systems.

ScienceLogic - IT Operations Management

Customize and automate data center and private cloud monitoring.

Crowd.fm - Event Listing Management

Developers can access and integrate event data from the service within their apps.

Geosophic - User analytics for Mobile Gaming

Developers can access behavioral data from users to create user profiles which can be used to segment players for marketing.

UpTrends - Website & Resource Monitoring Service

Offers API methods for supporting basic CRUD (creating, reading, updating and deleting) monitoring rules.

Amazon Glacier - Cloud-based Data Archiving

Users can create vaults to organize archives, and upload, retrieve and monitor status of jobs.

Socialcam API Gives Developers Access to Public Videos

Michael Garrity — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:35:00 GMT

Developers now have access to the API of Socialcam, a video app that allows users to quickly and easily capture, view and share high-quality videos with their friends, family, acquaintances and any other interested parties.

By opening up the API, third-party developers will be able to build apps based around the videos that Socialcam users shoot and share. Upon its initial release, developers will get access to all public videos to embed and work with. However, since the primary purpose is to give them access to the library – rather than add to it – they’ll still have to use the regular Socialcam app to create and upload videos.

The API will include metadata that allows developers to sort videos by data and geolocation to allow them to create mashups based on events.

Earlier this year, Socialcam unveiled new features that allowed users to add themes and soundtracks to their videos, while also opening up the API as a private, request-only beta service. Eventually, it was contacted by the Washington Post to use videos of the London Olympics as part of the news organization’s coverage of the games. That’s about when it was decided that the API should be opened up to the public.

Socialcam was also recently acquired by Autodesk.

Join the A-List with Prosperent Celebrity API

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:45:00 GMT

Performance marketers operating in the affiliate space are continually looking for ways to access new streams of revenue, and a new API from Prosperent (a provider of affiliate tools) lets them do that in a high-fashion manner.

Prosperent's new Celebrity API enables developers to query a database of more than 400 celebrities and receive a list of products associated with an individual celebrity's style. The API then provides raw data on the celebrity products that can be incorporated into the backend of a site. The "consumer-facing" results are a list of top celebrity-inspired products with celebrity photos of course links to purchase the returned products online.

Prosperent's Celebrity Product API follows a commission-based payment structure in which customers are paid 70 percent of each sale.

"Traditionally, a web developer or content creator would need to devote hundreds of hours of manual work to research the products associated with celebrities," said Brian Lovett, CEO of Prosperent. "Our new API will give our users fast and easy access to celebrity products and can be used on its own, or as a supportive component to a larger performance advertising campaign with PerformanceAds and ProsperLinks."

Developers Access US Census Data

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 19:00:00 GMT

The U.S. Census Bureau has released an Application Programming Interface (API) for developers to make use of demographic, social-economic, and housing statistics.

The API lets developers customize statistics into Web or mobile apps from the 2012 Census (which includes detailed statistics on population, age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, household relationship and owner/renter status, for a variety of geographic areas down to the level of census tracts and blocks) and the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (which includes detailed statistics on a rich assortment of topics (education, income, employment, commuting, occupation, housing characteristics and more) down to the level of census tracts and block groups.)

Developers will be able to use the API in a variety of ways including showing commuting patterns, or displaying the latest numbers on owners and renters in specific neighborhoods. One Web apps that has already been created (more are available within the Bureau’s app gallery) is an Age Finder which shows the count of the population for a single year of age or a customized age range by sex, race for states, counties and places),

“We hope to see many apps grow out of the Census API, as this opens up our statistics beyond traditional uses,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said. “The API gives data developers in research, business and government the means to customize our statistics into an app that their audiences and customers need.”

Walgreens Opens Developer Portal

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:18:00 GMT

Drugstore chain Walgreens is taking the the lead amongst its competitors - at least when it comes to embracing the mobile Web.

Walgreens introduced a developer portal that will allow software developers to integrate their applications with Walgreens QuickPrints SDK (software development ). The QuickPrints service allows mobile users to print photos from their phone to any Walgreens store.

The QuickPrints SDK has already been adopted by GroupShot, Kicksend, Pic Stitch, Pinweel, and StillShot, and will partner in the coming weeks with digital photo editing platform Aviary.

"Today's social media giants have demonstrated the power of APIs for creating a massive choice of apps around a business, and now APIs are becoming imperative for any business to thrive in the digital economy," said Chet Kapoor, Apigee CEO. "Walgreens is proving to be a leading technology innovator, aggressively embracing the mobile market to enhance the pharmacy experience for customers."

10 API’s to Integrate within Your Next Website/Application

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:31:00 GMT

To stand out with today’s more savvy and sophisticated user, you’ll need to push the boundaries and be disruptive when it comes to the experience you provide. Website Magazine pays close attention to news and events related to API’s and that’s as good a place as any to start. Below you’ll find a list of recently updated/released API’s that you may want to consider integration with your next website or application.

Advertising: Google’s Affiliate Network API enables publishers to look up advertisers and access order and lead transactions.

Answers: Ask500People’s API allows users to vote, create polls and retrive data from the Ask500People website.

Bookmarking: Gimme Bar’s API allows developers to access user collections, get user information, post and access collections.

Social: The Badgeville API allows developers to manage reward programs, access behavior information and manage user information.

Calendar: Online scheduling and appointment setting service MakePlans enables developers to access and integration the sites services into their sites/apps.

Education: The API from Blackboard Collaborate enables developers to integrate the services features into any learning management or content management system.

Tools: Yahoo's Content Analysis API enables users to perform content analysis on text or a URL. The API can extract terms from content and rank them based on their overall importance to content.

Invoicing: The FetchFlow API enables developers to access client information, create and manage invoices and retrieve estimate information.

Feed Search: An API from Q-Sensei offers a multi-dimension search and indexing technology to leverage both structured and unstructured data.

Database: Amazon’s DynamoDB (a NoSQL database) API enables developers to create, update and delete tables from a database.

Media Management: MetaCDN’s API supports user account management as well as functions including creating, retrieving, updating and deleting media elements.

Media Search: The Library of Congress provides access to an image collection that can be incorporated into other apps.

Google Affiliate Network API

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:30:00 GMT

Google might be ramping up its fight against thin affiliate sites, but at the same time it is rewarding “advanced publishers” and advertisers by launching the first version of its Affiliate Network API.

The API provides an opportunity to automate some important tasks related to the Google Affiliate Network. For example, publishers can use the API to access data that advertisers have chosen to share such as payout rank. And of course it will work in reverse as well. Advertisers can use the API to access data on publishers such as publisher classification.

And let’s not forget the developers. The API also provides access to event-level data for transactions and actions which can be integrated into internal systems and applications.

Mashery Increases API Flexibility with Control Center

Michael Garrity — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:45:00 GMT

Gartner has predicted that by the year 2014, a many as 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will offer public application programming interfaces (API) as a means of disclosing a range of materials, from media content and product catalogs to commercial transactions and medical records.

An increase in API usage will mean that IT managers will demand more control over how API traffic is managed.

Mashery, a provider of API management technology and services, plans to meet this issue head-on with its annoucement of the Mashery API Control Center, a platform designed for flexible routing and management of global API traffic, both in the cloud or on a site. The platform, which is the first in the industry, is run out of a single, powerful dashboard that provides highly scalable and comprehensive insights into API performance.

The Control Center will allow companies to "mix and match" between APIs run in the cloud and those on other premises based on security, speed and control requirements. This eliminates the need for companies and IT managers "to make an all-or-nothing decision between running APIs in the cloud or behind their own firewalls."

For each API, managers can choose one of two different deployment options. The first is Mashery Local, a new version of the company's traffic manager that operates entirely inside a corporate data center under the full control of IT managers. The other is Mashery Cloud, which is made up of two independent, global, enterprise-grade API distribution networks that offer four levels of failover and redundancy. The Cloud networks are operated by Mashery.

Google+ Reveals API to Developers

Michael Garrity — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:00:00 GMT

It's officially time for Google+ to go to the next level, and they made a big first step by (finally) releasing the first documents of the Google+ API on its new Google+ Platform Blog.

The G+ team claims that this is "just the beginning" of opening up their platform to outside developers.

They clearly lay out their policies for independent developers in their blog, which is best summed up with their three primary principles: put the user first, be transparent and respect user data.

Google+ is now considerably closer to becoming a legitimate challenger for Facebook's social networking crown, although they're clearly taking it slow and practicing caution in choosing what they release at the moment.

As of now, only information on public data has been, well, made public, and because it's based on open, public data, it's really easy for developers to authorize apps.

Despite the limited release of only the public data aspects of the API, this seems to be enough to tide over the hungry developers who have been hotly anticipating the information so that they can start working with Google+.

Who is excited about this big news from Google+?

New API from Kole Imports for Wholesalers

Mike Phillips — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

Wholesalers have a new tool at their disposal and it comes from Kole Imports, a leading importing and wholesale company offering discount goods, most notably in the dollar-store business. The Kole Imports API can now be used – free of charge – to sell goods with real-time data.

In the coming weeks and months the API will be used to pull an individual product at a time, to supply shipment notifications and accept orders, as well as supply product feeds to facilitate Kole's drop ship program, as it does currently. Kole's business is based in bulk, but merchants and website owners can buy and sell in as little volume as 24 pieces at a time. Goods offered from Kole vary – from apparel and auto accessories to stationary and sporting goods. The advantage for merchants using the API is tapping into real-time data of thousands of items, all housed in and shipped from Kole's 250,000 square-foot warehouse. A merchant could, for example, sell thousands of items (on their own website or even on eBay or Amazon) and collect payment without ever handling the items or incurring any upfront costs, including shipping.

"It's really the next wave of importing," says Jason Kole, VP of business development, Kole Imports. "The opportunities for light importers – people who may buy one or two containers per year – it's getting much harder for them. The costs keep going up on merchandise, the warehousing costs are more expensive than they used to be. [The API] enables people to sell wholesale quantities and offer them without having to pay all of those costs. It's a huge step forward for the industry to have all of this available for someone to use at their fingertips. And it's free.

“Anyone can access it. It's very easy to use. We have a full customer service team, and anyone can begin selling right away. Our model is to make it available to as many people as possible and to not place any barriers to entry on it."

Also according to Kole, Web developers can contact Kole Imports to find freelance projects from merchants who need help setting up their online stores, at support@KoleImports.com.

Measuring Social Reach with PeekYou API

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:30:00 GMT

Search technology company PeekYou, which is on a mission to re-index the public web around people, announced the launch of its Social Analytics API. Through the API, PeekYou partners are able to identify and map an individuals' digital footprint, then structure, categorize and analyze the public content.

The API’s output includes geo-demographics, social insights, spam filtering, and specialized scores that measure an individual’s social reach. The API is aimed at complimenting data services like Gnip or DataSift and helps companies measure, plan and track their social marketing strategies. In practice, the data is going to be very interesting. Developers will be able to combine geo-demographic data to brand mentions and understand not only the profiles and reach of their social audience, but benchmark and track gains in specific markets.

“We are excited to supply a unique set of insights and scores to our partners, and are very proud that we are setting the standard of delivering non-personally identifiable information through a process that respects consumers’ private data and platform Terms of Service,” said Josh Mackey, GM of Product for PeekYou.