question one: why i care about APIs.

Last week, I suggested five questions that I thought were worth asking anyone you are hiring in a media related job, if you want to be sure they are fairly literate in terms of how people communicate online.  I've been asked to answer those questions myself, and will be doing so one at a time.  

Question One: What is the most interesting thing being done with an API in the services you use online?

If I'd been asked this last week, it would have been a comment about tying real time communication into a visual representation of location (Probably a Twitter / Google Maps mashup) but I had a thought today that gave me a different answer.

I recently started using Tweetdeck and TwitterFon as my Twitter tools of choice, after several months of using the desktop and iphone versions of Twitterrific.  I did this not out of preference for the interface, but because I'd hit the content wall for Twitter - I was following too many people to keep on top of any attempts to reach out to me directly.  Content was being lost in the stream, and the stream is the essence of Twitter.

The applications I'm using now go fishing in the stream, basically.  Replies directed at me, content that fits search parameters I have set up, is set aside for me to peruse at my leisure.  Instead of reading every post I can in an attempt to stay up to date, I can take advantage of asynchronous communication, and use Twitter in a slightly less obsessive manner.

This isn't a mindblowing use of the Twitter API, it's more or less exactly why the information was made available.  But, in terms of my interaction with the service, and in terms of my limitations in terms of time and attention, fishing in the stream of Twitter updates fundamentally changes the service.  Twitter is a different beast, in terms of my behaviour, using these applications.

It's expanded beyond the experience it was designed to have, and it's done so by letting control out of the hands of the creators.  This is what APIs are for, but it was astonishing for me to watch the changes in my own life, firsthand, due to these tiny changes.