
Recommendations API - projectileboy
https://developer.bestbuy.com/documentation/recommendations-api
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projectileboy
I work as a developer on the API team at Best Buy, and we're trying to open up
our data in ways that will (hopefully) be useful to folks outside of Best Buy.
Please feel free to comment on anything you especially like or dislike.

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Osiris
Where did the idea for the API come from? At large companies that like I
imagine upper-management sees things like this as a cost center, which can
make it difficult to try and innovate.

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BallinBige
heres to avoiding bankruptcy! somehow i find myself rooting for the underdog
in an internet world.

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_RPM
Best Buy is the leader in the retail market for consumer electronics.

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tericho
Having worked as a developer for several large retailers I have inevitably
pondered whether a public API would be of any value to either the developer
community or the business itself. The Gallery[1] offers a small number of use
cases but I still have trouble grasping how upper management, as forward
thinking as they may be, would see any ROI for the time and effort required to
establish and maintain such a large, brittle piece of software. Not to mention
the risks of potentially providing tools for competitive advantage to others
in the electronics space (however few there may be nowadays) or a security
slip of some kind.

At any rate, kudos to the team for trying to move the industry forward.

[1]
[https://developer.bestbuy.com/gallery](https://developer.bestbuy.com/gallery)

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projectileboy
Thanks for the kudos! I'm a relative newcomer to the group; we have some great
programmers and product folks who have been growing this for years now.

You raise a number of interesting points. Our view is that by sharing our
data, we can create an ecosystem in which third parties can make apps and
services that make a better overall experience for the customers, and of
course we hope that we'll benefit from that, however indirectly. The risks are
relatively minor: our code is small and our team is small, so we don't cost
much. And at least for now, we're not really serving up any data that you
can't see on bestbuy.com, so we're not (yet) facing any large security issues.

As for the use cases, I really think people are just starting to scratch the
surface of what you might do with data from a very large retailer.

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_RPM
I've been using Best Buy's API for 4 years now. My first API key was
registered on 1/31/11 at 2:24 pm. It is crazy it has been this long. This is
the site I built using the API:
[http://boominaudio.com](http://boominaudio.com)

The BBY API is awesome. I've especially liked the stores API. I've grabbed the
location of the user, and then mapped out products that are in stock near them
and use the Google Maps API to show people products on a map relative to their
location. The data that is pulled from the API, is then stored in Memcached
for like 6 hours. I actually store the product data in MySQL, but certain
things are pulled dynamically on the fly, like the product reviews data.

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kristenwomack
Nice audio site. Let us know if you would like us to feature your site in our
gallery. Email us at developer@bestbuy.com to discuss the process.

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_RPM
That would be great. I Hope to speak with you soon.

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click170
Are there any plans to deploy the same API to FutureShop.ca?

My understanding is that they are one and the same company under different
roofs. I worked in the Canadian west-coast Bestbuy warehouse and we shipped
product to both BestBuy and FutureShop stores, sometimes with stickers from
the other store still on it.

Bestbuy.ca and Futureshop.ca even share a remarkably similar design, though
BestBuy.com does look dissimilar to both bb.ca and fs.ca.

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dmix
Anecdotally homedepot.com and homedepot.ca are developed by totally different
teams. I wouldn't be surprised if Bestbuy is too.

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quantisan
Black Friday is coming up in a couple months. How fast can this buy stuff for
me?

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jeffehobbs
Coolest thing. Nice work.

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projectileboy
Thanks! I encourage you to check out [https://developer.bestbuy.com/get-
started](https://developer.bestbuy.com/get-started), register for a key, and
give it a try.

