API stands for Application Programming Interface. What does that mean? Well, it has different meaning to different people depending on the level of understanding of development and programming but in general term, an API is a means to communicate between programs.
Currently, the API is the trend in the programming world. Before web technologies become this advanced, API user were only programmer or the scientists who were writing the white papers, figuring things out, inventing new codes and providing patterns and paradigms in coding for other programmers who just got into the field. A programming API is very difficult to understand for people who are not familiar to the language of use.
These days API in web just change the whole meaning of the API for users, as the new meaning of API is applications can talk to each other without any user knowledge or intervention. An API is a software to software interface, not just a programming interface. These days you can leverage an API for any purpose or usage you have in mind, you just need to find the right software and play a little with its modules and figure out how to integrate with your application or software and in a way this is the beauty of evolving technology but at the same time it can create some issues.
Should your company offer an API for outside world to build upon? Sure, why not, if you have good quality APIs that offer values and get people attracted to use them. Like Mashery has helped companies by providing lots of APIs, tools and platforms. So in my humble opinion if you can offer quality and add value join the game and enjoy the partnership.
Should you get involved with one of the platforms or APIs that is developed by other company’s API? Well, one answer to these types of questions is yes, as leveraging another company’s API will open new doors and facilitate and speed up the process and reduce the cost of development, google map and twitter are examples of wonderful services. On the other hand, the answer can be no because if that company’s API is changing dramatically or policy of usage changes over the time you don’t know what to rely upon and you have no control over the changes, so there are major risks in place. Things can get really complicated. Also not all of these API have good documentation and support.
To conclude, the web in the future is not going to be same as before and the world of APIs in web is different now, it is all about data!