I think I “get” the iPad in a way most people still can’t.  A business week article posted today illustrates that fairly clearly…

Don't get me wrong. I am a fan of the iPod Touch and therefore get the point of the iPad. I often use the Touch to catch up on e-mail, catch up with friends on Facebook, and send tweets to Twitter. When I travel, it becomes my newspaper and—thanks to the Amazon Kindle application—a less-than-ideal book reader. I even use it to catch video from time to time. The iPad had me at the bigger screen. Then again, I am a tech enthusiast.

I've talked to a lot of people who don't seem to get what the iPad is for, no matter how many times I explain it to them. Dave Letterman joked about it in his Top Ten list on Feb. 1. Among the surprises in the $3.8 trillion federal budget: "A $1 billion research grant to figure out what the hell the iPad does." On Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update host Seth Meyers said: "This week Apple released a thing that does stuff that its other stuff already does."

With no offense intended, if you think you “get” the iPad because you have an iPod Touch than you’ve missed the point.  The iPad is a bet on the future not on the present.  It’s about meeting a need that is imminent not one that’s necessarily here yet. 

Let me walk you through the thought process that Apple appears to be using.  Two points…

Point #1 - Once documents start moving to the cloud people are going to want a way to view those documents on the go. In the same way that people carry a notepad to meetings now they’ll want to pull up documents in the future.  They need a device that focuses on viewing device (as opposed to PCs, laptops and netbooks which make huge concessions for data entry).  The same is true of paper media like books and newspapers.  People need a way to carry around these digital representations.

Point #2 - People aren’t going to redefine the page.  Digital documents will continue to be based around 8.5” by 11” dimensions just as Roman Chariots defined the Space Shuttle’s booster rockets (The link says false but it really isn’t if you read the “Origin” section below).  So paper will be the form factor that defines the mobile devices we carry around with us in the future. 

In the end we come to a point where we can define a need people will have.  The device in question will have to be roughly the size of paper, small enough to carry around, able to access the Internet (or “Cloud”) and able to display documents in as pleasing a way possible.

That need is what brings Apple to the iPad.  The important point is that the iPad’s competition isn’t the iPhone or the iPod it’s Paper!

Think about this for a second.  Apple didn’t bother with a camera, they used an aspect ratio that forces video scaling, and made all kinds of other concessions to get the device out the door.  But what did they make sure to get right?  What did they spend a big chunk of their presentation on?? 

iWork for the iPad and a Book Store.

So Apple is not being secretive about this.  The conclusions I’ve laid out are obvious based on what Apple has done and said.  The blogosphere is so focused on “media” that they’re forgetting the rest of the world.  The iPad is positioning itself to replace paper of every kind and that’s why it’s important.

And Yes, it might not be an instant success but that’s all the better for Apple.  They don’t need the money now and time just means a chance for further refinement.  When the need finally becomes apparent Apple will be 2 generations ahead of the competition (just as they are with the iPhone now).  Again I say, the first generation iPhone was missing some pretty key features too (most notably 3G). 

In conclusion, “getting” the iPad is about looking beyond today’s needs.

A little set up is required for this one so bear with me…

The business section of The Atlantic shares my reaction to reading the most recent unemployment numbers.  Their article, entitled “Unemployment Rate Fall to 9.7%, But 20,000 Jobs Were Lost?”, elaborate by saying…

The national unemployment rate declined in January to the seasonally adjusted rate of 9.7% from 10.0% in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate beat consensus expectations of remaining unchanged at 10.0%. But even though the national rate declined, 20,000 more jobs were lost. That was worse than consensus expectations, where economist expected a gain of 15,000 jobs.

So why did this happen? The answer is that the numbers were “seasonally adjusted” for January…

Remember, the reported number is seasonally adjusted. It says that in January, we had 14.8 million unemployed Americans, which is about a half million fewer than the 15.3 million unemployed in December. Sounds great, right?

Maybe, maybe not. If you don't adjust for seasonality that changes. A lot. Then, January had 16.1 million unemployed, while December had 14.7 million -- an increase of 1.4 million jobless Americans.

In other words December is a month of Holidays and more people were hired specifically for that month.  Those people were then “laid off” in January but the unemployment rate doesn’t count them which is why the rate went down even though the number of jobless went up.

At this point you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about this on a tech blog.  Because the journey to getting that explanation led me through the Government’s data repository site Data.gov.

For those who haven’t read my posts in the past I’m not a fan of Data.Gov.  I applaud the idea but the effort itself is so badly done that it’s next to useless. The perfect example of this is the fact that job statistics aren’t published on the site. 

In fact, I couldn’t find much of anything useful.  The closest I found was a report entitled “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics”.  The description said…

Each month the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program surveys about 150,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 390,000 individual worksites, in order to provide detailed industry data on employment, hours, and earnings of workers on nonfarm payrolls.

So I clicked on the little CSV icon…

and came to this…

Yes, apparently I need Java to download a simple CSV file (CSV stands for Comma Separated Value and is basically a text file with values separated by commas) .  So I went along with it and that brought me to this…

Which finally led me to this (In a pop-up if you can believe that)

A few things to note here…

1.  The whole point of Data.gov is to make the data sets available to programmers.  But this has so many loops to jump through (Java, Popups, redirects, etc…) that you’d need a sophisticated crawler to actually get the info (which defeats the whole point)

2.  Data.gov goes on about how many data sets they have available and what a success the site is because of that.  But if they’re just reposting links to department websites that existed before the site was put up than is it really successful?

3.  In the end Data.gov didn’t have the employment data that’s distributed to every major news organization.  So how effective is this initiative if the Dept. of Labor isn’t even putting all it’s most recent data on the site?

So again I go back to the point I try to make regularly here which is that doing anything (no matter how ineffective) is not better than doing nothing at all.  Every time someone praises the success of Data.gov what I see is the cover up of a system that doesn’t really work at all. 

Dick Brass, who headed Microsoft’s TabletPC and E-book efforts a decade ago, has an interesting piece in the New York Times today.  The issue he’s trying to address is the decline of Microsoft and the causes behind it.  In his own words…

But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

The flaw in his logic starts in the first paragraph.  Microsoft hasn’t “brought us the future” in my lifetime. 

Windows 3.1 wasn’t the future it was a copy of Apple.  Word wasn’t the future it was a copy of Wordperfect.  Excel’s the same with 1-2-3.  Exchange and Lotus Notes. DirectX and OpenGL.  Internet Explorer and Netscape.  MSN and AOL.  Etc…

Microsoft was never good at bringing the future as much as they were good at being fierce competitors. They could take a competitor’s product, match it feature for feature, then expand on that and sell it for a cheaper price.  That’s how Microsoft has always succeeded.  By, to quote the famous phrase, embracing and extending. 

Which brings me to Mr. Brass’ theory on the cause of Microsoft’s decline…

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation.

…

For example, early in my tenure, our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.

In this part I think he’s right and wrong.  He’s right in that Microsoft has never developed a system of internal innovation but he’s wrong in thinking that’s the problem. 

The problem is Microsoft has forgotten it’s role in the computing eco-system

Microsoft is not the innovator.  They are the ones who bring other companies innovations to the masses.  That’s why the company can’t deal with internal innovation.  Because that’s never been it’s strength.  People don’t expect innovation out of Microsoft and that includes their own internal department heads. 

Which brings me to Mr. Brass’ second example…

Another example: When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

With all due respect the VP of the Office Group was right.  The TabletPC was a bomb and it wasn’t poor Office integration that killed it.  To Compare the TabletPC to an iPad is like comparing a wheel barrel to a Ferarri. 

When Microsoft tries to “bring us the future” it doesn’t work. 

If Microsoft wants to slow it’s decline it needs to dump it’s massive R&D budget into competing against actual products from other companies.  That is where they can win.  

At the same time Microsoft Employees need to realize that their company works best when they compete.  Microsoft didn’t create the game console but Xbox Live is still the best online game playing experience.  There’s a lot of innovation that can be done in Microsoft’s traditional role as competitor and Microsoft employees need to realize that and be proud of it.  Rather than going off and trying to invent something new they should look at how to better something existing.

If they do I'm confident they'll succeed at it.

Addendum: Can anyone even think of a product category that Microsoft created and then succeeded in?  Off the top of my head I can't. 

Tonight I’ve read about 1,000 different iPad related posts.  The most succinct of which was from Gizmodo where they list “8 Things That Suck About the iPad” (which was actually the 11 things once all was said and done). 

I agree with the article.  Most of the things they list really do suck (As I said earlier, I’m not exactly thrilled with the product).  But I think there’s value in looking at why a company does something and to understand the strategy behind it.  To make that point I’d like to go through the list and point out why Apple might be acting in the way they are.

No Cameras

Touch Keyboard

No HDMI Out

Adapters, Adapters, Adapters

Let’s be realistic here: Apple is going to release a new version of the iPad some time in the future.  Given that it makes sense for them to leave off features.

I know this sounds like I’m an Apple apologist but that’s not the case.  I just realize the same reality that Apple does which is that enthusiasts will buy the lousy V1.0 and then turn around and buy the improved V2.0 a year later.  So Apple makes a lot more money if they don’t put in every feature up front.

Think about the original iPhone for a second.  No 3g, lousy camera, kind of slow, no GPS, and so on.  All things they remedied by the 3GS and all reasons I personally bought the 3GS even though I already had an iPhone.  That makes 2 sales for Apple simply by leaving stuff out.

No Multitasking

I hate the lack of multi-tasking as much as the next guy but as someone who actually interacts with users I see why Apple did it.  I can’t tell you how many times my department gets a complaint that someone’s computer is slow only to find they have 10 programs open at once.  Users abuse multitasking and blame the device when that abuse slows their system down. 

I do wish Apple would make a few special exceptions (audio programs mainly) but all in all I think lack of multitasking is a plus for them not a minus.

A Closed App Ecosystem

The problem with this complaint is that it has no real impact in the end.  Right now Apple is #1 by far in Smartphone Applications.  Should that change, or even begin to change, they could always throw the doors open and let everyone in.  So it really doesn’t have a negative impact on the company.

More importantly, no one on the consumer end seems to care.  Even the developers who have been rejected generally admit that (a) they still love their iPhone and (b) they still plan to develop for it.  That’s why it’s a big story every time a notable iPhone developer walks away from the platform.   Because it happens so rarely.

No Flash

This is the one that hurts me the most but it’s also the most strategically important point.  Apple wants to control all digital media.  They make no denials on that point.  But in order to do that they have to disrupt Adobe because Flash is still top of the hill when it comes to streaming video.

Apple’s advantage here is that upper income families tend to love their products and they’ve priced the iPad at a point where families making $100,000+ a year can write it off as an incidental purchase.  If Apple can get a significant chunk of that market they can accomplish a very important goal: They can deprive Flash based sites like Hulu of the viewers they value the most

Remember these Flash based sites make their money off of Advertising.  So by depriving them of high income viewers they weaken those sites and by weakening those sites they weaken every company that makes money from them…companies like Adobe.  Which means Apple has created a Win-Win for themselves.  Either sites like Hulu start supporting Quicktime (and paying Apple for the privilege)  or they get weaker allowing Apple to come in as a competitor down the line and kill them off completely. 

In the end, whichever way it goes, the Flash ecosystem is substantially damaged.

Conclusion

Again, I don’t like these “sucky things” any more than the folks at Gizmodo do.  But I see why Apple did them and I have to admit they’re right.  Because I’m going to buy an iPad now and a year or two from now when they add some of the features above I’m probably going to buy that one too.  So if you have to blame anyone don’t blame Apple, blame me.

Tad DeHaven of the Cato institute is my hero for today.  Throughout the Cato Institutes live blog of the State of the Union he was pulling quotes from previous SOTU addresses by George W. Bush in which Bush had said the exact same things.  I’ve always said the irony of liberals hating Bush and Conservatives hating Obama is that both basically pursued the exact same policies and this offers some proof of that.

So for those who have commented or e-mailed claiming I hate Real Time Media I post this to show I’m not against it (I’m just against those who think it’s a news source)

P.S.  For the record my favorite quote of the night came from Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason.com who said…

I think they might be cheering for "pass[ing] the problem on to another generation of Americans"

(It’s funny because the timing of the applause made it seem like that was exactly what they were cheering for)

I think Apple’s reputation is working against them at this point.   I mean, we all knew the iPad (a.k.a. Apple Tablet) was over hyped.   So a little disappointment was inevitable.  But even with that in mind I feel let down.

Not because it’s a bad product.  At $499 for the base model it’s a phenomenal product.  Both for what it can do (run iPhone Apps) and what it has the potential to do.  I’d encourage everyone to check out gdgt.com’s live coverage of the event and go down to where iWork is shown.  The amount of polish is incredible and it shows that a tablet could replace a notebook/netbook for many people. 

But in the end this devices is still just a big ol’ iPod Touch.  No camera,  or facial recognition, or Flash, or new gestures, or revolutionary e-book platform, or really anything beyond a bigger screen.  Worse it makes some of the iPhone’s shortcoming’s worse (Not being able to view Hulu on the iPad is a real let down).

Don’t get me wrong, I still fully intend to buy one.  I just won’t be too excited for it (which might be a good thing given that it won’t be out for 90 days)

(On a side note, anyone who pre-ordered the JooJoo has to feel pretty stupid right about now)

My days of using the New York Times to rebut free content supporters may be coming to an end.  Today New York Magazine has an article detailing the Times’ plan to charge customers.  I wanted to address some amusing comments by NY Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman that appeared in that article. 

In this quote he’s addressing TimesSelect which was the NY Times’ original attempt at a pay wall (they discontinued it in 2007)…

“As we got into it, it was clear to me I was getting cut off from a lot of my readers in India and China where 50 dollars per year would be equal to a quarter of college tuition,” Friedman recently told me by phone. “What was coming to me anecdotally from my travels was the five worst words that as a columnist you ever want to hear: ‘I used to read you before you went behind the wall.’”

Friedman is now “pro some kind of pay model,” he says. “My own feeling is, we have to do anything we can to raise money,” he told me. “At some point we gotta charge for our product.”

I asked Friedman whether any of the technologists he meets during his globe-trotting had presented any groundbreaking ideas for how to save the Times and journalism. While he’s optimistic about the coming crop of tablets and e-readers, the answer is no. “We’re in a megatransition.

One of the points I desperately try to make on this blog is that technology, while empowering, doesn’t change the basic rules that have always been present in society.  In this case that means people purchasing something are willing to pay what they think it’s worth and no more.  That was true in the days of Horse and Buggies and it’s true now. 

So called “innovations” such as MicroTransactions are just alternate pricing schemes.  Basically a nice way of saying the stuff you’re selling is only worth a penny.  When I was a kid I used “MicroTransactions” to buy cheap gum balls with flavor that only lasted for half a second. 

Which is my point here.  The reason Newspapers are having so much trouble profiting from their content is because their content isn’t worth that much.   When they tried to charge for it no one paid because people are only willing to pay what they think the content is worth and those people simply weren’t willing to pay for Mr. Friedman’s column. 

To prove my point I wanted to look at the most recent NY Times column by Mr. Friedman.  It begins…

Frankly, if I had my wish, we would be on our way out of Afghanistan not in, we would be letting Pakistan figure out which Taliban they want to conspire with and which ones they want to fight, we would be letting Israelis and Palestinians figure out on their own how to make peace, we would be taking $100 billion out of the Pentagon budget to make us independent of imported oil — nothing would make us more secure — and we would be reducing the reward for killing or capturing Osama bin Laden to exactly what he’s worth: 10 cents and an autographed picture of Dick Cheney.

So we’re basically dealing in opinion and cheap political attacks. Not out of line for a NY Times Op Ed but no more intelligent than the stuff you’d get from the college guys protesting the war on my local street corner and they’re giving it away for free. 

Mr. Friedman goes on…

Am I going isolationist? No, but visiting the greater China region always leaves me envious of the leaders of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, who surely get to spend more of their time focusing on how to build their nations than my president, whose agenda can be derailed at any moment by a jihadist death cult using exploding underpants.

Now we graduate to flat out ignorance.  Anyone even vaguely familiar with either the internal strife in China or the dicey political situation between countries in East Asia knows the leaders of all those countries have plenty on their plates beyond blissful nation building.  One last paragraph before I’m done…

Has anyone noticed the most important peace breakthrough on the planet in the last two years? It’s right here: the new calm in the Strait of Taiwan. For decades, this was considered the most dangerous place on earth, with Taiwan and China pointing missiles at each other on hair triggers. Well, over the past two years, China and Taiwan have reached a quiet rapprochement

Again, anyone who thinks 2 years of peace means something has no grasp of history (or Wikipedia apparently).  In the end things are not more peaceful now than they have been in times past.  China has repeatedly vacillated between peaceful co-existence and threats.  They employ each strategically in order to manipulate the political climate in Taiwan to their advantage.  But in the end China still thinks of Taiwan as a member providence while 85% of the Taiwanese people think of themselves as a separate country. 

So how is it that a NY Times columnist knows less than me, a guy with a $350 a year StratFor subscription?

Because all Friedman has going for him is arrogance.  He has no experience in this area.  He clearly makes no attempt to verify his facts or engage those who disagree with him.  In short, his opinion is worth virtually nothing. 

Which returns me to my original point.  Mr. Friedman is a talented writer and he’s welcome to his opinion but that doesn’t mean it’s worth a lot to the public at large.  That realization tells you more about why newspapers are failing than all the digital ink that’s been devoted to the topic in recent years.

One of the promises of the digital age is a return to meritocracy in the arena of written opinion.  I think we’re a long way from that goal but I can’t help but see the fall of newspapers as a sign that we’re still on the right road.

P.S.  Mashable has a poll asking whether users will pay.  As of this writing 83% say "Probably Not" or "Definately Not" while another 11% aren't sure (answering "Possibly").  I rest my case.

Yesterday Steve Ballmer took a few minutes of his CES keynote to reveal several Microsoft based “slate” PCs.  These are the devices that are designed to compete with the Apple Tablet (a.k.a. iSlate until a more official name is made public).

All in all it was a pretty terrible announcement.  Ballmer came on with a prototype, had no pricing or availability to offer, had a half finished 17 second ad from HP to show and then did a demo that looked bad even by “Microsoft Demo” standards.  Worse yet he stole Apple’s rumored terminology (“Slate” PCs) making it even clearer that this was a hastily put together attempt to “one up” Apple. 

The whole thing was horribly embarrassing and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Microsoft’s stock dropped after the announcement.

But here’s the important part: Microsoft did the exact right thing with this announcement.

Not everyone can be the cool kid in class and generally when those who aren’t the cool kid succeed it’s because they accept that fact and go with what strengths they do have.  Microsoft is never, ever going to out-do Apple in the flash department.  That’s historically been the case and that’s almost certainly not going to change.

If Microsoft wants to get back to the success they had in the past they have to do two things in regards to Apple.

1.  Be Good Enough

2.  Be Cheaper

That’s how Microsoft wins, that’s how Microsoft has always won and that’s how they’ll win in the future.  As horrible as last night’s announcement was it did one important thing which is to tell consumers that Microsoft will also be in the “Slate” market. 

Steve Ballmer was basically up there saying “Look, if that Apple tablet looks too darn expensive you can do everything it can do with this Windows 7 based tablet [albeit in a much less refined package]”

So in my book yesterday was a success for Microsoft even though it didn’t look like it at the time.  Apple will always seem cooler and the Internet News and Blog sites will always spend more digital ink praising Apple.  Again, that’s always been the case.  But Microsoft always made more money and if they can get a “slate” out the door that fills the two requirements I outlined above I think they’ll continue to make more money in the future.

The saying goes “you should never argue with a drunk or a fool”

It’s good advice.  I should be following it.  But this post was so ignorant and it was written in such an insulting manner that I just couldn’t help myself.  With that said, here’s the premise…

Oh. Thank. God. Twitter’s deals with Google and Microsoft (letting the two companies search Twitter in real-time) total $25 million and make the company profitable for 2009, according to BusinessWeek. This finally ends the stupidest line of commentary of the past few years: “How will Twitter survive without making money?”  There are three reasons this is so stupid

Now before I even begin with his justification points let me clarify a few things…

1.  Bloomberg’s source is anonymous and Twitter doesn’t make it’s financials public.  So we don’t know if any of this is true (though for the duration of this post I’ll assume it is)

2.  These are multi-year deals.  So if these payments are making Twitter profitable it’s a finance trick.  They’re counting the whole payment on this balance sheet rather than distributing it across the years.   This seems likely since Twitter’s own internal estimates put every twitter user costing the company $1 per year and the Wall Street Journal reported in May that the service had reached 32.1 million users (I assume the $1 has gone down substantially but they still have to be close to $25 million per year)

3.  Any renewal of these deals depends on Twitter becoming a viable long term company.  So there’s a chicken/egg problem here.  Twitter is popular right now because they’ve been using VC money to keep running.  That’s why search engines are willing to give them an additional revenue source.  But in order to keep that relationship going they’ll have to replace the VC money with actual revenue.  So the search deal’s future is dependent on finding another revenue source.

4. It remains to be seen whether Google and Microsoft will continue to pay for information that is essentially free to the public.  They’re doing so now because the amount of money to get it is so small.  But they are clearly the power players in the relationship and they could just as easily dictate better terms in the future.  Especially if Twitter’s active user base drops.

All that said let me address his points…

1. Google did it too: Three years to profit isn’t new. Twitter launched in 2006. They possibly turned a profit in under three years. Google took just as long – even if you count back to its 1998 incorporation and not to the site’s beginning as a research project in 1996.

The Google point really isn’t valid.  Google got lucky in that another company stumbled upon the idea of AdSense and they were able to acquire it.  So while it’s possible other companies might get equally as lucky you can’t really call this a strategy. 

2. MySpace did it too: Lucrative search deals aren’t new. So far, commentators focused on two possible revenue streams for Twitter: Ads and pro services. But search deals with other companies? That’s nothing you could expect paid tech journalists to think up. Except for Facebook’s two deals with Microsoft, or the $900-million MySpace-Google deal of mid-2006.

Yes except that the Myspace-Google deal of 2006 was completely different.  In that deal Google became the exclusive search engine for MySpace AND (far more importantly) became the exclusive provider of text based advertising.  The only thing it had in common with the Twitter search deal is the fact that “search” was in the title.

More to the point it seems clear that neither Google nor Microsoft were willing to offer Twitter a deal like the one Myspace struck (since it would be foolish to invalidate the chance at a $900 million deal for a $25 million dollar one)

3. The press and the analysts are morons: Secrecy not new. I’m not even citing sources here. This is siimple: Businesses don’t tell all their plans to the public.

Brilliant, right? Businesses don’t tell all their plans to the public.

Secrecy is not new but a couple of things make Twitter’s secrecy different.  First, a massive amount of their internal documents were leaked not too long ago.  Those documents revealed revenue projections that didn’t seem realistic.  Two, Twitter’s service is still failing periodically making the need for revenue more of a focus.  In other words they don’t appear to have a secret revenue plan and if they do than now would be the time to use it because their service isn’t reliable.

So in the end we’re left where we started which is that Twitter has no clear road to profitability.  But in saying that I want to make one final point. 

All the discussion about Twitter’s ability to become profitable is just a way for people to help the company find a way to become profitable.

The author of the quoted piece attacks people like Caroline McCarthy (of CNet) and Michael Arrington (of TechCrunch) while missing the fact that both are supporters and avid users or Twitter.  No one, not even Twitter detractors like myself, is hoping the company will fail.  Everyone is on their side.

Which is why this snide attack post was out of line and why I felt the need to reply to it (against the good advice I mentioned at the beginning)

Fred Wilson has a post today on the standardization of APIs.  He says…

First WordPress allowed posting and reading wordpress blogs via the Twitter API.

Then yesterday our portfolio company Tumblr did the same.

John Borthwick has been advising companies for a while now to build APIs that mimic the Twitter API. His reasoning is that if your API look and feels similar to the Twitter API then third party developers will have an easier time adopting it and building to it. Makes sense to me.

But the problem here is it doesn’t make sense really.  At least not in the way he seems to be endorsing. The problem is there’s a difference between being inspired by something and imitating it.

Let me explain…

Online APIs are in their infancy right now so there are a lot of differences between them.  But as they mature they’ll become similar to each other.  Just as other software has done in the past.  There’s a reason why Windows and OS X have more similarities than differences.  Or that every programming language has a variation of “.tostring()” available. 

It’s natural for developers to look at what works in other products and try to implement that in their own products.

So it’s great that publishing APIs are adopting similar methods (as Wordpress has done with the Twitter API).  But that doesn’t mean they should imitate each other completely.

Wordpress is not Twitter.  If certain parts of the Twitter API work for Wordpress than they should adopt them.  But if not than they shouldn’t be pressured into adopting ill fitting API calls just to adhere to some imagined standard.  Not only because it would lessen their product but because it prevents them from thinking up better ways of doing things

Better ways that other companies (like Twitter) might want to adopt some day.  To put this in perspective imagine a world where Apple was forced to tailor their APIs to act in the same way as Windows APIs because Windows is the more widely used OS. 

Which brings me to my final point.  APIs aren’t file formats.  In a file format the whole point of it is to store and retrieve data so it makes sense to adhere to standards because not doing so would prevent the data from fulfilling it’s purpose (to be read).  But APIs aren’t like that.  Having a different API isn’t going to break anything.  So while developers should always look at the APIs of other companies for inspiration they shouldn’t treat successful APIs like Gospel