
Netflix no longer issuing new API keys - nickbaum
http://developer.netflix.com/blog/read/Changes_to_the_Public_API_Program
======
NelsonMinar
It's a shame. But having watched a few companies shut down APIs (including my
own work at Google) I've learned the hard way that unless an API is central to
a company's business success, it's eventually going to become a business
problem.

~~~
swalsh
Don't build a business on anything that doesn't cost you money.

~~~
raverbashing
Or better, don't build a business that depends on an irreplaceable
product/company.

~~~
mesozoic
I believe this is the appropriate concern. If your business would critically
fail with no alternatives should a supplier back out you have a major problem,
this same lesson applies to most any business.

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esonderegger
This doesn't surprise me, but it does make me sad because I think it's a
short-sighted move that will hurt Netflix in the long run.

Full disclosure: my side-project (which I have woefully neglected of late:
<http://moviepresto.com>) uses the Netflix API to determine if a movie is
available on Netflix Instant or as a disc rental and then links accordingly.
The title, description, basic info, and background image come from
themoviedb.org. Personally, I'd prefer for my "what do I want to watch
tonight?" decision start with the set of everything that's been released and
then follow to "where is that available?", instead of starting with "what is
available to watch on platform X?". My cynical side tells me that Netflix
doesn't just want to be the center of the online streaming universe; they want
to BE the universe.

Even more sadly, I think Netflix won't even realize what they are missing out
on: potential user interface improvements that they could incorporate into
their own products, ideas for integration they never would've thought of,
potential great hires, etc.

~~~
jacalata
<http://www.canistream.it/> appears to do exactly that 'what do I want to
watch and where is it' flow. I just installed the app and I love it.

~~~
esonderegger
Agreed! I wasn't aware of canistream.it until reading this thread and I'm very
impressed with it.

I think if I was aware of that site when I started moviepresto, I wouldn't
have built it. But, then again, I wouldn't have learned the things I learned
in the process.

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yock
In what world can they describe a complete discontinuation of their developer
platform as a change in policy?

~~~
waterlesscloud
"They are also designed to allow us to continue to offer the public API
program in a way that aligns with our goals."

This might be my new favorite example of corporate doublespeak.

~~~
drawkbox
They should have said our public api is turning private.

This might be a twitter client like third party problem, where externally the
content is displayed better and drives too many away from it directly.

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mtgx
It seems like a strategy these days. Start out by giving out API's to get as
many other companies to use it and therefore promote your service, then when
you're big enough and don't think they are needed anymore, cut them off.

~~~
edouard1234567
I'm not sure this is the case for Netflix, I think the answer is much simpler
: very few people use it and no meaningful project came out of it in the last
few years.

Also Netflix will eventually sell or shut down its dvd business. What will
remain is a relatively small library of titles available on streaming...

~~~
e40
If the Android app NetQ uses it, then I'd say that is meaningful.

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mgkimsal
Crap...

Just today I was talking with someone about integrating Netflix data in to
their app, and I almost registered for an API key, but waited until I got
home. Then I stopped off, got home late, did some work, and now this. :/

I guess if this is how they run it, then they might revoke access to then-
current API-key holders in the future with little warning anyway...

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sandfox
If anyone has ever bothered looking at any Netflix talks / slideshares [1]
about APIs, they would have surely seen the various graphs detailing how their
API usage started and grew.

TL:DR 3rd party usage of the APIs used to be big, but then became pretty much
a statistical irrelevance compared to usage by Netflix's own software / tv
apps / etc.

So it would seem the business case to keep developing a 3rd party friendly API
is not really there anymore.

[1] [http://www.slideshare.net/danieljacobson/techniques-for-
scal...](http://www.slideshare.net/danieljacobson/techniques-for-scaling-the-
netflix-api-qcon-sf)

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randall
I think of APIs as open-source business development, and unless companies get
a lot of value out of their apis, they shut them down for the same reason they
shut down BD departments: They aren't providing any value.

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mmanfrin
My best guess: this is to lock out any additional competitors in the set-top
game so they can resurrect a Netflix branded set-top. Netflix streaming
alongside netflix-vended rentals? I can see it happening.

~~~
whichdan
Is there really any value in a Netflix branded set-top? Every video game
console plays Netflix, the new generation of consoles is coming out soon, and
a bunch of TVs have Netflix baked in.

~~~
aninteger
I think there was a story recently about how Netflix encodes each video
multiple times for the various boxes and television sets. If they had their
own box they could be more in control of at least one of those encoding
formats.

~~~
illuminate
<http://gigaom.com/2012/12/18/netflix-encoding/>

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yoda_sl
Netflix forums have been dead for years now... So it is not a surprise. But
still I am sad to see the oData catalog shutting down which mean that my 4
stars iOS/Android/Kindle app will have to be removed from their respective
stores.

It is always a trade off when you are relying on API: on one side you can
focus solely on the project core values knowing that the underlying data will
be provided, on the other side if you build everything including what an API
provides you are ending building up a different business.

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LAMike
What is the coolest thing to come out of Netflix's API?

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avolcano
I'm _guessing_ (and I'll admit I don't know this for sure, feel free to
correct me if you do!) that <http://instantwatcher.com/> uses it, which is a
wonderful data-heavy interface for finding stuff to watch on Netflix Instant.
It's much faster and more informative than Netflix's kind of shitty browsing
experience.

~~~
look_lookatme
That'd be my guess too. One of my never executed pet projects was a service
that aggregated all of the streaming providers libraries and let me quickly
filter between genre, provider and "magic" looking for something I'd wanna
watch. Most of the other services don't seem to have netflix level APIs, so it
would have taken some trickery to get something approaching a comprehensive
catalog for them...

~~~
willholloway
I built <http://streamjoy.tv> as an abstraction layer above netflix, itunes
and amazon and I will attest it took quite some trickery to get something
approaching a comprehensive catalog. Even things that should have been simple
like using the main python library for Amazon's product api was not simple
because I had to rewrite sections of the library that dealt with api
throttling limits.

There are gaps in the APIs and though they can be dealt with, it was not
always easy or straightforward.

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zacs
I use the OData interface to power streamingcriterions.com, which is totally
niche but still get a couple hundred hits a day. I built it to scratch my own
itch, but I guess it'll stop working pretty shortly. Bummer.

~~~
pragmar
Had a similar project based on OData called qwikstant.com, by no means a hit,
but still trafficked. It's depressing to have to shutter it.. As I was
developing I did notice that the OData DB was always slightly behind and the
api forums were a ghost town - guess I should have seen it coming, but I had
an itch. Got burned when google shut off services before as well, pretty sure
I'm finished with free corporate APIs at this point, experimentation and one-
offs aside.

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greghinch
Sounds like something they were forced to do in a contract with a studio

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matdrewin
Never build a business that depends on an api.

~~~
johns
There are a lot of different types of APIs (partner, SaaS, internal/mobile,
infrastructure, etc), many of which you can use as a part of building a
business.

Never build a business freeloading off another business. The social and
consumer API providers are realizing that their APIs don't drive value to
their core business objectives (selling subscriptions or ads). APIs are a
means to an end. The end has to benefit both sides. Don't blame the means for
faulty ends.

~~~
sirclueless
There's two very different kinds of APIs.

One is a service, the "aS" in PaaS, SaaS, and many others, where what you are
getting is programmatic access to the thing people want to sell you anyways. A
service might be very valuable, but it's probably replaceable. If someone is
geolocating IPs for you, hosting images for you, handling blog comments for
you, this is all stuff someone else could do for you if your first-choice API
turns into yet another /dev/null.

The other kind of API is access to specific content and/or networks. This is a
whole different ball of wax, and I would be wary of doing anything significant
with an API that is only valuable because of the value of the data that is
coming over it. You have to ask yourself very carefully why they are giving
you access. Most likely it is because they think you will drive growth to
them. Once that motivation is gone because they have reached scale, they will
stop treating you as valuable, and start to see all the value you generate as
value that is not being sent their way: they will start rent-seeking.

Basically, ask yourself: if some API that you use were to close up shop, would
your company no longer have an existential purpose? If you want to give people
directions to a brick-and-mortar store, and Google Maps closed itself off
tomorrow, would your company cease to exist? Hopefully the answer is no, you
would just have to spend some resources and switch to someone else or build it
yourself.

