APIs yesterday, APIs tomorrow

Tom Evslin provides a historical perspective on the renewed interest in APIs and looks forward to how they are driving the next generation internet:

"Becoming a platform will be the road to fame and glory - not to mention riches - for many Web 2.0 services. Success will be determined by the usefulness of the underlying service and how attractive it is to third party developers and to other services. And, of course, how well it is marketed to developers.

 

..."Today Web 2.0 is made up of thousands of small service providers as well as few large ones. Many of the small services will never reach a critical mass of usefulness by themselves. However, useful services with useful APIs will grow because of the investment that other service providers make in extending and incorporating their data and functionality."

Tom writes good stuff...if you're looking to stick a new RSS feed in your pipe to smoke, I suggest his Fractals of Change feed.