Social API’s are my new craze!
for Friday, 11th December, 2009 and has No Comments
For quite sometime I’ve been having a brainstorm of a new direction in Web Development i’d like to head into next. Since holding accounts with sites like facebook, digg, last.fm, they’ve quickly become all the rage and since they began releasing their own API’s to leverage their technology into your own sites or apps, I soon became curious and wanted to try it but held off – however, now I want in!
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I decided not to jump on the bandwagon early on due to the lack of documentation and whether these site’s truely had any potential or if they were going to be just a Web 2.0 flop. Few years on, the API’s I’ve been interested in has all changed and I’m now seeing the true benefits and potentials that come with learning these new frameworks.
Have already begun playing around with Facebook connect, which you’ll notice I’ve added on my Journal. Aside from this, I’ve been getting my feet wet with Twitters Search API. I created a project offline which basicly draws in latest Tweets by subject/hashtag. Created with a combination of jQuery and AJax – real time updating really does make all the difference – I’ll most likely be adding this to my site.
So for now, I’ll be learning the API’s by creating mini projects offline – If i decide to release any of them, they’ll be added into an experimental sub section along with the other sections that I’m due to be releasing under my “Work” page.
What purpose will the API’s serve to me?
Understanding the API’s to a comfortable level will allow me to create my own app’s, add into client’s website’s/pages in the form of plugins for Wordpress or Expression Engine and understand exactly how things are run under the hood. Of course, best of all, it’s another skill set that I’ll have under my belt and make me even more versatile. That’s always a good thing.
Enough writing, time to have some fun! 