Answer from Wikipedia:

A two-sided market, also called a two-sided network, is an intermediary economic platform having two distinct user groups that provide each other with network benefits.

In other words it is a marketplace (online or offline) where different kinds of people meet and exchange valuable tangible or intangible goods and services.

Examples of two side marketplaces are literally everywhere and include companies like:

• Facebook
• Uber
• AirBnB
• Amazon
• Booking.com

and many more. These companies provide services that support and mediate the interconnection of groups of people in different manner.

Jeff Bezos gave a talk at MIT the 25th of November 2002 explaining some of the key characteristics of Amazon at that time. At the time, he was looking for new fresh graduates to join his ranks and explained some of features of these marketplaces that are still valid nowadays.

Some key aspects of this talk include:

• you need to help customers to find products and products to find customers. Actually, the second part is more challenging than the first one.
• How logistics is intertwined with computer science in several different ways
• The system needs to works at scale since its inception
• Real time experiments with feedback loop as opposite of batch data mining of the data
• Amazon Web Service was launched in 2001 with the key idea of providing an SDK and a solid API for external users in order to build customizable store fronts
• Amazon Web Services are connected to their affiliate program in order to give a percentage of the sales as commission (or referral fee) to their external developers

The talk also provides a few examples of how developers were coming out with new ways of taking advantage of the internet that they did not expect nor plan. In addition, he explains how extreme customization and recommendation was (and still is) an important feature of the system.

Clearly, there is much more to say about building a two sided marketplace and how various technologies evolved since then. However, this is a good start as an introduction to the API Economy

The post On Building a Two Sided Marketplace appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

An application programming interface (or API) is a computing interface which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. APIs in the web are literally everywhere and serve a never-ending and ever-growing set of purposes.

The plot below gives you an idea on the size of the economy and its estimated growth in the coming years. We should probably note that this estimate is pre-Covid. Therefore, I would not be surprised if the growth would be even greater.

The big 4 as well as McKinsey are regularly monitoring the phenomena. Here you can see the point of view of Deloitte on the API Economy in one of their recent whitepapers.

The #API #Economy and its role for #programming the Web
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From a technical point of view, the communication leverages the fact that machines exchange messages via the Web usually using a REST or a SOAP approach.

REST/SOAP and their role in programming the Web

Representational state transfer (in short ReST) is a software architectural style that defines a set of constraints to be used for creating Web services. Web services that conform to the REST architectural style, called RESTful Web services, provide interoperability between computer systems on the Internet. It leverages the GET/PUT/POST/DELETE of the HTTP protocol for implementing the CRUD methods that are usually used in DBs such as:

• CREATE procedures generate new records via INSERT statements.
• READ procedures reads the data based on input parameters. Similarly, RETRIEVE procedures grab records based on input parameters.
• UPDATE procedures modify records without overwriting them.
• DELETE procedures delete where specified.

SOAP (abbreviation for Simple Object Access Protocol) is more flexible and is just a messaging protocol specification for exchanging structured information. It is used in the context of implementing web services in computer networks. Its purpose is to provide extensibility, neutrality, verbosity, and independence.

#REST and #SOAP play an important role in #programming the web and the #API #Economy
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SOAP and REST are subject to a never-ending battle. Programmers and software architects tend to have a polarized view. I personally see them as two sides of the same coin. I will cover some of the aspects of the discussion in a future article. In this post, as I usually use SOAP in the lectures of SOE, I will use REST for describing how programming the web works.

Programming the Web from a technical point of view

This video summarizes the various concepts that rotate around REST as well as gives an example using data represented in JSON.

For a good API the protocol is only the beginning and there is always need for a SDK. They practically go in tandem. A software development kit (or SDK in short) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, a debugger and perhaps a software framework. They are normally specific to a hardware platform and operating system combination. In other words, they are a set tools that make the adoption of a protocol easy.

This video explains how an API and a SDK complement each other:

the role of #SDK in #designing a good web #API and fostering protocol adoptions
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Useful resources for navigating the API economy

Where can I find an API? You can start by searching in google “<name of the company> API” and you will be surprised by the astonishing amount of companies that are using this approach. However, in case you are shopping for ideas, this approach may be limiting the possibilities. A better alternative could be to familiarize with the API Economy using this set of videos from the ProgrammableWeb:

You could also browse catalogs that are available in the Internet, such as:

• https://any-api.com/ Collection of APIs and tools for using them.
• https://www.programmableweb.com/category/all/apis A “historical” initiative that intends to list all possible APIs that are available in the web.
• https://apilist.fun/interviews APIs can be also a fun endeavor!

Useful #resources for navigating the #API #Economy and discover new services
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The post The API Economy: Resources for Programming the Web appeared first on Francesco Lelli.