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Using a throwaway account to not get ourselves cut off too.. I run a website in a different industry but the danger of being cut off from the api feeds we need

Using a throwaway account to not get ourselves cut off too.. I run a website in a different industry but the danger of being cut off from the api feeds we need to provide our product is a threat we fear every day. We work hard to comply with all regulations but this often means these other much larger companies can whenever they decide to change their minds force us to change things on our website else cut us off completely. I guess it's the nature of the business when you build something as an extension to something else and do it so well that you become a threat, but still I feel for Relive. We're basically building and market testing a product for free for the "parent" company and if it does too good it's really in their best interest to kill the little guy off and make it their own sadly much of the time. :( Edit: We can also confirm "ghosting" is a real thing. Typically the larger companies refuse to have conversations with us because they know they're being a bully and a human connection will make them feel bad.

hnarn 7y ago
So why use a third party API in the first place? For something like Strava, what makes their API so much better than say, OpenStreetMap (or any similar free dataset) that anything else would be unusable? And if no free dataset exists, why not create one? Rally the competition and the community for a free dataset that benefits everyone, and sell the product on top of it.
- matharmin 7y ago
  Because it's not a public dataset, it's the specific user's data that only lives in Strava (or one of the other platforms that they integrate with).
  - ThirdPartyApi 7y ago
    Correct. I guess without giving more detail I can understand how my username or original post can be confusing. But I'm representing companies that use api feeds from larger companies to build products on top of them like Relive did, not using a third party api such as a map in our product if that make sense.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      That's always a dangerous game though surely, you know from the outset that the API provider might come out with a first-party solutiom and all but kill your, what is essentially a, plugin.
      - toyg 7y ago
        The objective is typically to make it complex and advanced enough that it becomes difficult for the provider to reimplement it from scratch, or build features that the provider will probably never implement. See for example how Spotlight on macOS has not killed Alfred and probably never will, because Alfred can be very liberal with things like running scripts and plugins - whereas Apple cannot.

hnarn 7y ago

So why use a third party API in the first place? For something like Strava, what makes their API so much better than say, OpenStreetMap (or any similar free dataset) that anything else would be unusable? And if no free dataset exists, why not create one? Rally the competition and the community for a free dataset that benefits everyone, and sell the product on top of it.

matharmin 7y ago
Because it's not a public dataset, it's the specific user's data that only lives in Strava (or one of the other platforms that they integrate with).
- ThirdPartyApi 7y ago
  Correct. I guess without giving more detail I can understand how my username or original post can be confusing. But I'm representing companies that use api feeds from larger companies to build products on top of them like Relive did, not using a third party api such as a map in our product if that make sense.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    That's always a dangerous game though surely, you know from the outset that the API provider might come out with a first-party solutiom and all but kill your, what is essentially a, plugin.
    - toyg 7y ago
      The objective is typically to make it complex and advanced enough that it becomes difficult for the provider to reimplement it from scratch, or build features that the provider will probably never implement. See for example how Spotlight on macOS has not killed Alfred and probably never will, because Alfred can be very liberal with things like running scripts and plugins - whereas Apple cannot.