GNIP Spells a Whole New World for Data APIs

Allow me to get nerdy.

It has been a long time since I got downright giddy about something developer-oriented. Lots of new APIs are coming out all the time and I usually take a once over look at them to determine if there is something cool there. A lot of time there are cool things and I promise myself to come back and explore the possibilities later. I rarely do.

However, with the announcement of GNIP today, I finally feel like my incessant mulling of API frameworks might be coming to an end.

Let me back up. A few weeks ago, I was fiddling with a bunch of APIs trying to create some mashup I was working on. I sent Keith a direct message pitching a “crazy idea”. An API for all APIs. One API to rule them all. His response, “A meta API?”

That made sense and made me laugh because I know how much he hates the word “meta”.

My idea quickly dissipated as I realized it was probably pretty futile to create an API for all these varied services that all had different data formats and types and my need for it wasn’t all that important at the time anyway.

I could have also used the concept when I was working on Mokonji, the project that now sits dead because Trackur beat me to the punch.

The idea with GNIP, bringing this story full circle, is that it is a meta-API. It sits in front of “data producers” (Digg, Flickr, Disqus) and provides a standardized API for “data consumers” (Plaxo, MyBlogLog, even Lijit!) to exchange data.

Since this is still so very early, there are bound to be other data producers and consumers. Also notable is that the only data format is XML. XMPP and JSON are missing. That will likely change over time too.

Data Producers not yet involved that should be:

And a few Data Consumers that are also missing:

Stumble it!

About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He is Business Development Manager for Lijit and he worked as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.