Brave Tech World

October 2, 2006

     There are hundreds of Web 2.0 companies out there providing similar service. There is probably a few doing similar things to Sampa, and some might be exposing an API for developers to use it.

    Nowadays, there is this notion that companies should expose their database and business logic for people to be able to mashup, import, export, integrate, connect, extend, etc.

    I think that is great, and at Sampa we do Mashups with a dozen service already.

    Investing the time and effort into making a Sampa API is far down the list. Customers are not asking, and we are not sure what the real value would be at this point.

    Here is an example: there is about two dozen (or more) sites for you to upload your picture (Sampa, Flickr, Photobucket, Smugmug, etc.). Almost all of the new Web 2.0 companies that are doing photo storage provide an API, and I ask myself why? Do they really think that people are desperate to implement their API instead of Flickr?

    My point is that APIs for Startup are not that valuable and cost too much resources, unless, you own some type of exclusive content (like Kayak) or you provide a unique service (like Riya).

    Once we have a couple hundred thousand active users on Sampa and dozens clamoring for an API we might add that to the list of features to be stack-ranked against all the features that the other users are asking for.

     This reminds me of a post on the blog Creating Passionate Users about how companies tend to focus on their competitors and not on their customers, and that is bad.