Why APIs should never have been made open (and how it might’ve monetised Twitter)

Open APIs might be great but more importantly they’re really stupid.

Yep, that right i’m gonna say something incendiary about why I think Open APIs aren’t a great idea. After the jump I’ll deliver my thoughts in gory detail…

Right, so, Open APIs = daft. Yeah thats right, I said it!

Don’t get me wrong I love Open APIs because I get the use of so many lovely (if utterly identical save where they put the dot in their na.me) web 2.0 apps. Hurray for Open APIs – now I can mashup my Twitter feed with my Canine’s Dogbook account, find out which pirate I am and blog about it all at whilst simul and live-casting it and share the playlist of songs I listened to whilst doing all of the above. Isn’t it great?

Y’see whilst Open APIs are oh-so-very social media and enable the mashups we so love 99% are utter turd. Ok, thats hyperbolic (and thus not entirely true) but there are a lot of social and web 2.0 apps that might sound all flashy whizzy and great but they only really interest the developers mum and maybe a handful of web 2.0 evangelists. The lumpen proletariat don’t give a damn about them. That said I recognise its important we have developers doing that as one or two might hit upon the ‘next big thing’ in digital.

However, when there become quite literally ninety-trillion (i’ve counted) apps enabling you to map your Twitter network even the hardiest digital media evangelist has to conceed that maybe we don’t need quite so many companies offering quite such similar services.

It this – *this* ladies and gentlemen – that suggests to me that APIs should never have been made open. If Twitter had kept their API closed they could have sold the code to a handful of developers who could develop Twitter mashups. The result: money in Twitter’s pockets (not necessarily by selling to the highest bidder, but to the best ideas, you understand) and we, the web 2.0 audience would have a narrower scope of services rather than having to wade through the manifold dross that has been developed to date.

I know its not cool to be Mr Business Guy but I can’t help thinking that web 2.0 missed a trick when it opened its APIs – there was money to be made in selling APIs and yet they’ve been given away for free.

Of course this is great for us as digital media consumers and I’m sure many people will disagree with me but I think this thought is at least worth entertaining. Especially as everyone scratches their head wondering what will happen when Twitter burns thorugh its VC and *still* hasn’t found a revenue model.