API metrics are perhaps the single most important factor in improving any API system. Metrics are inherently valuable – tracking data on API usage, availability, uptime, and other insights is pivotal to keeping a consistently healthy platform. That being said, it’s an unfortunate truth that many developers do not leverage API analytics to their full power, simply preferring to consider metrics a business tool, and little else. Read more
Matthew Broderick once quipped in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” Sure, he wasn’t talking about API companies but he might as well have been. Read more
Most web applications, and many mobile applications, rely on 3rd party APIs like social login, cloud storage, email, messaging, CRM etc. The benefits are obvious, and for some applications the API integration is a core element. However, the API dependency does make applications more vulnerable to change — one small change to an API can break an entire app. Read more
In the spring of 2017, Twitter published a series of guidelines for automated API users utilizing bots. These guidelines were created to help control the intent, actions, and result of bots on the service. Accordingly, there was some discussion about just what these guidelines did and didn’t do, and how valuable such a set of guidelines were. Read more
We’ve been in the API game for a little while now, and we’ve seen our fair share of compelling developer communities being cultivated. On the flipside, we’ve also seen some epic fails. At our 2016 Platform Summit, Shayne Parmelee, developer experience lead at Shopify, talked about some of his own successes (and failures) during his time with the company. Read more
