It is important be wary of the foundation you build your business on. If you are building the core of your businesses around another company's API service you should be prepared to offer concrete value to that service's users in a way that doesn't directly compete with the main service, or do anything to directly or indirectly promote their competitors.
And, if you go against that approach you shouldn't be surprised or indignant when you get shut down. You will have a much better chance building a truly complimentary product, rather then rallying users to boycott a service or demand changes in policy.
To me it's sort of like someone who always drives over the speed limit by at least 50mph, and one day they finally get pulled over and are given a ticket. But, because they were never 'caught' before, they just feel like they were entitled to always drive that fast, and instead of just paying the ticket, they try to get the speed limit laws changed, or to have a judge throw out their ticket and let them keep driving however they want.
When you use another company's API, you are driving on someone else's road, and for better of worse you need to play by their rules.
So if you want to drive fast with no consequences, build your own road. And if your interested in 'exploiting' or piggybacking on someone else infrastructure, don't do something to call too much attention to your self.
PadMapper - started providing other listings that were not from craigslist.
GoodFilms - providing information and data to other movies services besides netflix
Pealk - were undercutting the price point for LinkedIN premium features.
thanks for that. PadMapper probably would have been fine if they remained craigslist only.
I was watching Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai last night. In it there are a number of Samurai codes that are highlighted in title cards. One of them was this:
"If one were to say in a word what the condition of being a samurai is, its basis lies first in seriously devoting one's body and soul to his master. Not to forget one's master is the most fundamental obligation for a retainer."
I still think the rant is little more than link-bait (which used to be called flame-bait) but I feel the same way about iOS app startups. They should each memorize that quote.
This is the perennial frustration with the immense power of the network effect, a power that all start-ups live and die on.
Unfortunately, us humans have a hard time banding together and forming enough consensus to 'jump ship' enmass to a new service. Especially, when the a lack of 'innovative features' on a given service barely registers on the pain scale.
Look at the internets SOPA protest, the entire integrity of the internet was threatened and we did something about it. But how can you generate enough support around: we need better mash-ups to view craigslist postings!
You point is valid about the "but they have a right to do X". I think it does provide good discussion however.
My point wasn't so much that they have the right to do that, but more about when your playing with another company's API don't expect to disrupt them.
Choose a start-up that is already successfully and profitably using a company's API and make your service even better. AKA don't compete with the mothership.
If Microsoft decides tomorrow to say "if you want to write Free/Open Source Software, you can't use our API's" do they have a right to do so? What if it is competing with Microsoft software, i.e, "no use of our API's to build competing web browsers and office software" or the like?
I am genuinely asking because I think it's as clear a line as one might think.
Yes, they have the right to do so. It might be a bad idea for them to do it, but being their APIs they most certainly have the right to do that. Microsoft has no obligation to provide services to their competition free of charge just because someone out there feels it is the right thing to do. Of course, various court systems may disagree with me considering it is Microsoft.
The line is clear, the source of the service has the right to do whatever they want with it. Unless you want to claim that a company's property belongs to the people.
first of all, I am not sure they do have that right. Certainly if they tried, it would open up questions of the scope of user rights (do I, as a user have the right to run add-on software on a Microsoft platform independent of Microsoft's wishes), the scope of copyright (does 17 USC 102(b) provide a safe harbor for interoperability and prevent a software vendor from using copyrights to deny areas for competition), and the like. And that's before getting into anti-trust law.....
So I think in Microsoft's case I would argue that they have a) no legal or moral right to impose such and b) no effective mechanism to enforce such conditions. They make practical tools, and people may use those tools in whatever ways they see fit. To the extent Microsoft can limit this through a EULA, they are subject to all sorts of judicial scrutiny.
For example, I have a hard time imagining that a "you may not run a web server on this edition of Windows" would be enforcible. Client access license requirements might be in some cases but I don't know what the dimensions are that they would be.
The question with Craigslist only becomes harder because to interoperate you are interacting with Craigslist's infrastructure. This is of course covered arguably by a different set of laws which may give Craigslist a bit more freedom. But we have laws in many states that restrict what, say, shopping malls can require of people entering (a shopping mall in California, for example, cannot prohibit pamphletting).
I would like to see similar rules passed regarding the internet equivalent of shopping malls, to be honest.
I apologize, I should have been more clear. I agree with you about Microsoft and limiting things for third-parties in Windows. They've gone too far to be able to do that, Apple might be able to do it but they're quickly reaching that point with OSX. I was speaking more of APIs that Microsoft might create for various things web-related, as it relates to the story about Craigslist.
Your own linked articles about that topic are a user only complaining about the legal takedown of a useful tool [1] and another complaint about UX with an included blurb asking startups and users to put their time and data into something better [2]. Nothing about API changes or right to a company's proprietary data.
I am not shy to admit that I enjoy having pageviews (although I don't run ads). I could have done some better research and provided a deeper explication of my thoughts. I just saw a connection between three major 'API' controversies lately on HN, and wanted to share my initial thoughts to prompt healthy discussion.
I know I am in the minority, but I happen to think that the central concern of any business ought to be to maximize end-user value. Profits are a means to that end, not the other way around. So I would evaluate the API issue from the perspective of whether it adds value for the user or not, not whether in some myopic accountant's opinion it adds to the "bottom line."
It is frustrating that due to network effects, for-profit companies, gain a near monopoly on important data types. YouTube owns video, Craigslist owns classifieds, Netflix owns video viewing, etc.
It would be great if there was regulation over certain types of data that would require companies to post back to a central database if they take certain kinds of information. It would be great if there was a device that could help level the playing field.
The point of my post was to highlight that complaining, or being shocked by these companies behavoir is sort of missing the point.
How can we unify and provide access to what we feel to be 'universal' data types?
> It would be great if there was regulation over certain types of data that would require companies to post back to a central database if they take certain kinds of information. It would be great if there was a device that could help level the playing field.
My god, I hope not. The last thing we need is legislation that determines, because I went through the work of building up and creating a successful product and now have a massive amount of valuable data, I have to share it in the interest of 'leveling the playing field'.
I've been on the side of being a content creator with a very successful site, that was promptly scraped by a competitor because I had ammassed a large amount of very useful data. This data that was, through my site, freely available to the public, and the ad revenue helped pay the bills.
So I really don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who had, as part of their business model, the practice of scraping content from someone else's site, nor do I agree that we, as developers, should have free and unrestricted access to someone else's API... they are the ones gathering/storing the data, building the network, etc.. and any use they decide to allow us is at their discretion and a gift. Nothing wrong with that.
This is a slippery slope. Who defines these universal data types? And if they only are "defined" when someone gets big and powerful, doesn't that reduce the incentive to innovate and build big businesses?
The idea of mandating any such rule is not the solution. It's antithetical to how markets should work.
There's been no company that's managed to dominate forever. LinkedIn, CL, Netflix will be no different. Someone or ones will attack them (perhaps orthogonally) and ultimately they will lose their dominance. That's what happens to incumbents. The market takes care of them. Note: this disruption may or may not be quick.
> That's what happens to incumbents. The market takes care of them.
I'm not so sure. Communication tools are fundamentally different than most other products, because their primary value is the number of other people reachable through the service. This isn't true of most other industries, where you can drive a Toyota and I can drive a Ford and everyone is happy.
When your a whole market is based on the ability to interact with other people in some way, and a single company can flip interoperability on and off like a light switch, it has the potential to be a dangerous monopoly. The government stepped in and broke up Ma Bell because of this.
I don't buy it. In the case of CL or the other companies mentioned (Netflix and LinkedIn), calling any of them communication tools is not really close to an apt description/characterization.
If we characterize them as communication tools, we are using a pretty loose definition. Moreover, inviting regulators (via their involvement in some sort of monopoly breakdown) into the proverbial henhouse is a nice mix of anti-free enterprise, anti-entrepreneurship and misguided/naive.
It would be great if there was regulation over certain types of data that would require companies to post back to a central database if they take certain kinds of information. It would be great if there was a device that could help level the playing field.
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help!" - music to every Internet entrepreneur's ears.
A lot of potential value is materialized by entrepreneurs who expect to entrech themselves in such positions. Many would not run the risks and do the work if they could not, when and if successful, enjoy extraordinary benefit.
Until I came to visit the comments, I was convinced this could be a hoax/joke site.
"Wish you could spawn a human thread to help you?
If you have a task, small enough to delegate to someone, then this is it!" (Spawning humans!)
"Are you currently overworked, exhausted and have too much on your plate?" (Don't most people have too much on their plate?)
The site and its copy are vague and universal, which makes it funny, especially the 'Submit Problem' screen.
Only when I looked at the About Us page did I start to think this could be real.
However you also say "We find sites like stackoverflow very useful, but what if there was a middle term between them and small consultancy firms?"
You are basically trying to become a small consultancy firm it seems. Unless you let people sign-up and handle tasks themselves, like a crowdspring/99designs meets mechanical turk for programming.
I love it, particularly the statement "Facebook should stop treating ads like they are dirty things that must be manipulated and integrated unwittingly into the Facebook experience." Totally agree. Pinterest succeeds because it is a form of content discovery. Aggregators work toward the same purpose. If I knew that FB could truly target ads to my specific situation, you bet I would be curious to look at them. Who doesn't want to find new, compelling content all the time?
I believe whoever wins the content discovery game wins the next decade. Google+ is the only one I see trying to make strides in this area, but they simply don't have the active user base to back it up. FB has the userbase, it just needs to capitalize on it. Doing so would mean a very big win for the small business sector too; for once, ads would actually engage the user and probably convert to a sale more readily.
More than ads, FB needs to provide tools to content producers, businesses, pages that enable them to capitalize on such opportunities. How difficult would it be to say, "We found that 17-23 year olds whose parents like Tom Petty are 67% more likely to like your brand. Would you like to create a targeted ad for this group?" They already have the data. Businesses would easily pay for that kind of functionality.
I really do think that a StumbleUpon for ads would be great. People willingly tell SU what they like and don't like (which is what Facebook and Google are doing, but without explicit, up-front, opt-in consent). SU has millions of users, including me.
By telling them what content I want to see and what I don't want to see, I'm pretty happy knowing that I'm seeing exactly what I told them I wanted to see. Advertisers could do a lot in this space, and it sounds exactly like what you described.
How great would it be if Stumble Upon was pre-seeded with a ton of content automatically mined from your online behavior.
Manually curating a relevant stream of content requires alot of energy and effort. Right now, Facebook is the easiest, lowest effort source of content.
I imagine most Hacker News readers are pretty advanced when it comes to content discovery. But the average user is not as savy. By giving them a few tools, and a clear rules about how their behavior on facebook, (liking, sharing, reading, viewing, etc) contributes to the ads they are served, it could actually become a great resource that they pay attention to
The best forms of advertising don't give a user what he is already looking for, they give him what he doesn't know he needs. By manually curating what ads you like, chances are you'll miss stuff that is actually relevant. I'm a developer, but I have no desire to "learn javascript", because I know it already. Someone who is really into vintage cars will ignore car ads all the time; they have an existing network of sources and information and aren't as interested in changing that unless the story is very compelling.
Contrast that with the idea that FB knows about a 55-year old man that makes ~90k and has few hobbies, but has recently started reconnecting with all his buddies from high school; that type of person is now a profile for someone in whom an advertiser might create a NEW interest for vintage cars. The best part is you don't have to use forensic psychologists to create these profiles; simple statistics would be enough.
Exactly! Facebook already knows everything about you (if you're using it right). They pre-populate what they think you'd like, and you can fine-tune it manually.
It might even lead to more engaging ads, and a new market for companies who can't figure out how to create gripping ads on Facebook at the moment.
The way I see it: FB is scrambling to create new ways for companies to advertise. (e.g. Facebook Logout Ads, "like" a page for Subway commercial outtakes with Blake Griffin). How do you motivate a user who only wants to check out their friend's status to buy Tide or learn javascript? This is a solid idea that FB should notice.
It's hard to think that a user will willfully submit themselves to a page of ads, but I think this might be a good solution. Ads have definitely become smarter in reaching their audience. Seems like companies are finally beginning to understand the creativity needed to get user attention. If you're able to SU through ads that are hyper-targeted, you may see stuff that actually matters to you.
