

Genius API - tomlemon
http://genius.com/developers?api=1

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gobengo
APIs can shut down, bummer. But it's more of a bummer to never use them in the
first place.

It'd be rad if you could integrate with Genius' API in such a way that if they
ever shut it down, or you want to switch to another annotation service for any
reason, you would only have to point to another annotation provider instead of
rewriting all the syntax/semantics of the integration.

Sound cool? Get involved with:

* W3C Web Annotation WG: [http://www.w3.org/annotation/](http://www.w3.org/annotation/)

* OpenAnnotation Ontology: [http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/](http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/)

* W3C Social WG and Vocabulary: [http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-activitystreams-vocabulary-2015...](http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-activitystreams-vocabulary-20150129/#object-types)

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dwhly
Thanks for this comment Ben! +1000

Feel free to try an alternative, open annotation api, like ours:
api.hypothes.is

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devbug
Man, is Hypothesis awesome. I'm bumping into it more and more, and lovin' it
more and more everytime.

What kind of tech stack do you run? Last time I check it was mostly Javascript
(ugh).

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dntrkv
I am very hesitant to build anything on a free API like this nowadays, after
seeing what happened to the Twitter API, and more recently, the Soundcloud
API. I don't feel comfortable building an app using their API, and then having
them shut you down for whatever reason they come up with.

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xasos
Isn't this a concern with most APIs? (Even paid ones can shut down, like Ordrx
recently)

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dntrkv
The problem I see with companies providing an API on top of their service is
that their core business comes first, API second. So if someone were to use
their API to build something that takes traffic from their core business, they
will shut it down. Whereas a company whose sole business is providing an API
won't run into that same problem.

And I can't blame the companies for making that decision either, why should
the company serve your app if they're not even getting any traffic from it?
Which would be a logical argument, except these companies open up their APIs
and act like they are ok with it at first, and developers spend time building
on top of them, creating even more useful services, making the original
company even more popular, and then after those companies benefit from these
developers, they shut them down.

This is similar to what happened in this case, which I think was a complete
dick move by Soundcloud: [https://medium.com/@padschneider/r-i-p-
soundflake-79f7cf5f9d...](https://medium.com/@padschneider/r-i-p-
soundflake-79f7cf5f9d61)

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bduerst
Right, but that's the case with all APIs.

If your business model is entirely dependent on margins with other companies'
APIs (free or paid), a price increase for those APIs would put you out of
business anyways. The concern shouldn't be "What if they charge more for this
API?", the concern should be "Why is my business so dependent on this
company's APIs?"

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joshstrange
Genius is really cool service (founders/owners aside) and I love it for song
lyrics. An API into their backend sounds appealing but without some contract
that keeps them from shutting down the API with little to no notice or pulling
a twitter/soundcloud/netflix/etc I can't even begin to think about building on
top of this (for anything but little fun side projects/POC's).

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mason55
> _for anything but little fun side projects /POC's_

Which is exactly what they want. They don't want people scaling and running
huge businesses off their API, they want lots of little experiments by people
messing around. They can see what gains traction and then copy it. It's like a
free startup incubator and your investment is the time your engineers spend
keeping the API up.

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kenshiro_o
I created a modest Genius API ([http://genius-api.com/](http://genius-
api.com/)) when these guys had nothing out there, but still keen to try out
their own creation.

I do wonder though how they will react to people using the API to make money
off a webpage or an app.

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bliti
Anyone that is not from Genius care to comment how useful this might be? I'm
having a hard time thinking about why I should integrate with this service.
All it seems to do is take notes. Am I missing something?

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dntrkv
I actually think this has a ton of potential. Quick example would be
documentation for some framework. Users can comment directly on confusing
parts of some documentation, and after some discussion, it can be edited to
fix whatever confusion there was. That's just one example, I think anywhere
you have big blocks of text this will be handy. Even simple things like
marking typos in an article would be much easier if every site used a single
annotation service.

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bliti
Good point. Now, the question is, are the annotations available for download?
If not, why bother? Annotations are useful if they can be saved and moved
(just like bookmarks).

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ehmorris
You could use the API to export all your annotation data

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bliti
Nice. Is that a future proof feature? Will I be able to download the data in
any point in the future? After being punched in the mouth but other APIs I'm
wary of integrating without some understanding of what the future might look
like.

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msie
You'll have to create a backup service to periodically export your
annotations.

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hellameta
Sorry if this is a stupid question. Is the Genius Beta project powered by a
reverse proxy that injects JS onto pages? Thank you.

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elwell
A more legitimate way to get backlinks for SEO.

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wkirby
I used to work at Genius.com when it was a marketing automation company. Super
weird to see it now.

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nightpool
Different company. We just bought their domain name.

