I’m talking to traditional marketing people a lot about APIs. They’re not technical people, so I use a lot of examples. By nature, these examples are UI driven and their response is inevitably “oh, like a mashup.”
Well, no. Not like a mashup.
Here’s a better example. See my previous post about CBS and how they might accept news videos from anyone (or any App). You might imagine they have an issue with sharing copyrighted or inappropriate material.
Well, YouTube has solved that problem. Let’s say YouTube exposes their “check for copyright & pornography” functionality via an API. CBS might accept video then use YouTube’s mechanism for confirming the appropriateness of the submitted videos. CBS would then use these videos however they saw fit.
The YouTube API might never be used in a UI, but would add lots of value to anyone else working with video who just needs some basic content protection from copyright violations and porn distribution.