#api's

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Sabre has recently announced that it has NDC APIs available for end-to-end workflows. Learn more about these APIs and how Sabre is innovating beyond NDC with key stakeholders across the industry. source: https://tinyurl.com/y5qs4xzx

Not really. At least not yet…not completely….but what if..that was part of the future? 

No harm in a bit of spirited thinking. 

As I was reading Steven Levy's piece on Facebook's future (from f8), a series of thoughts kind of started taking shape. 

I mean let's look at all the social network's. They all started as communities. Places people couldn't connect with their friends, upload images of cats and babies, like, share, gloat on insidious levels of self importance disguised in the veneer of futuristic one liners and inspirational quotes and so on. They grew fast, even exploded as one would deem to think and then slowly started pivoting to make sense for larger business, drive revenues and pay their employees 401K's.

Thing is, a community is ephemeral, just like friendship is. It is great while it lasts, but one day it's going to disintegrate, because people change and as their lives change so do their communities. So how would a business which was based just on the premise of a community sustain over decades?

Friendster made way for Myspace which made space for Facebook and then we came across LinkedIn ( for Professionals), Twitter ( for real time conversations), and the later day Instagram, Snapchat , Whisper for the ephemeral ( in the moment) behaviour that is so akin to our nature.

There is always another community down the line -  which will be more interesting tomorrow, where people will gravitate to- unless the community starts becoming a service that is governed by need over wish.

People love the power of new. Because new is interesting, new is fancy and new smells good. New also gives people a chance to hit the f5 button on their own lives to make it more interesting. This is a basic instinct and no amount of strategy will change this.

But people also need and gravitate to what works. 

That's why even with so much of hate rant around email, it remains. We need to send and receive emails. Period. It's need based. There is nothing fancy or oh so cool about it. It just works. We don't share our amazing experience over emails, but we use it every single day.

The people who built these cool social networks understand this. That is the fundamental reason for the shift behind unbundling of apps. Imagine one Facebook with pictures, chats, developer connect, like button and so on. And then imagine

Facebook just for News Feed,( Paper)  

Facebook just for online messaging- ( Facebook Messenger),

Facebook just for Images ( Instagram),

Facebook for Developers ( the API)

Facebook for mobile chat ( What'sApp)  and so on...

The message is simple: Take the service you need even if you don't use the whole of us, but stay with us and use us or at least a part of us everyday. The emphasis is on the word need  and not on the word community. The community just power's the need and the software enables it. 

Same thing for LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn for finding Jobs

LinkedIn for becoming an influencer

LinkedIn for finding content

LinkedIn for hiring talent

Same for Twitter:

Twitter for news

Twitter for Television

Twitter for Analytics

Each is a service on it's own. Powerful because of the community it espouses and easy to use because of the software which runs it.

And It's in the service that networks start making money, because business start spending around these. A business doesn't care about the Like button, but it cares about what that button symbolizes in form of the number of potential buyers it can reach through that button. 

So from a business standpoint, for social networks, embedding the power of their service supported by their reach across as many business requirements and processes is tantamount for their long term survival.

Let's elucidate with an example: For b2b/ b2c organizations the LinkedIn and Facebook log in button gives them two things. Access to an existing community/ database of people for no price, and information on who is engaging with the business. At that juncture networks like  Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter are nothing more than software which has an API on which an organization business can hook up a service/ product/ content medium of its own to drive its own business mandate by leveraging the audience which these networks house.

Kind of like a cooler version of Middleware. Isn't it ?

The social network right between the audience and the product/ service powered by an API- visible through a button.

This is example of  a social network converting itself into a software to behave more like a Middleware.

Now let's look at another example: Developer creates a mobile application for which he uses ( say for example) Facebook Connect which would allow him to spread the reach of his app service across a large community and create an easy sign in to manage his database. But it's just one API which needs to work seamlessly across web and mobile platforms for the application to work and drive value for its users.  So the developer writes his application , then uses Facebook's connect API to create a singular sign in across web and mobile platforms. At this moment the API needs to be stable enough to work across infrastructure platforms. 

The social network right between the audience ( across web/ mobile/ cloud platforms and across mobile OS silos like iOS/ Android and Windows) and the service that the developer is providing.

This is example of  a social network converting itself into middleware across infrastructure platforms.

Interesting to see the evolution isn't it.

Social network companies by default and nature of their service, are inherently good in few things.

Writing amazingly good software which has intuitive UI

Managing copious amounts of data in the cloud

Running amazingly effective data centers which they created ground up on their own

Managing security of data share and transfer across devices and platforms ( admittedly they need work here but are getting there)

If you look at the few pointers above it will look suspiciously close to some of the core things that modern day businesses need in their traditional IT requirement.

Think about the pivots that these small "so called communities which only have cat videos" can make to stay relevant in a business world.

Amazing…isn't it ?

Facebook recently changed its motto.

The poster child of the web 2.0 revolution which decreed The Hacker Way as a way of life used to carry this motto till recently:

"Move Fast and Break Things"

Today it reads

"Move Fast with stable infrastructure"

It almost reads like the motto of some of the old boys on the block.

The old school B2B IT organizations who have survived changing businesses over four five decades easily and still manage to rake in quarterly profits, because their businesses were built around organizational and operational needs. Need that remains even today across businesses.

But then Mark Zuckerberg is smart. And he knows for Facebook to survive the next decade he needs more than a community with a billion people.  So do the Evan Wiliams, the Biz Stone's, the Jack Dorsey's and the Reid Hoffman's of the world.