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Yes and no. If you have the most complete and accurate data about something people need, then this is typically a very good situation and can be productized in
by leandot 8y ago
Yes and no. If you have the most complete and accurate data about something people need, then this is typically a very good situation and can be productized in different ways (via APIs or not). But there are so many other types of things that can be exposed via APIs that do not fall into the data category:
- Language translation, detection
- Emulating real-world - like the Stripe Card API
- Converting unstructured to structured data - e.g. free-form text dates to structured formats
- Any kind of computation actually
There are even examples in the thread that speak against this argument - the data for project Gutenberg is clearly there and good but people do want to have a better way to access it.
As to my intentions, I am not looking to build a product, at least not now, but I've profited from both APIs in the wild and from good discussions on HN so I am happy to start a meaningful thread.