Announcing the NYT API Tool
A few weeks ago, I was playing with the Facebook API and using the Facebook API Test Console. I thought to myself, “Wow, if we were smart, we'd have something like this for our APIs.” Sadly, it took me another two or three minutes before I remembered I was a developer and could just build it myself!
Context & Ripple Effects
The New York Times has been circling Facebook's developer ecosystem since launching its own Facebook application in September 2007, riding a wave that saw Facebook extend its platform beyond its own site in January 2008 (Facebook Extends Platform to the Web). This post comes from inside that loop: a Times developer playing with the Facebook API Test Console decided the paper's own APIs deserved the same treatment and built it himself within weeks.
The significance is less the tool itself than what it signals — a news organization treating developer experience as part of its API offering, borrowing interface patterns directly from Facebook rather than inventing them.
First-order effects
- Times developers and outside tinkerers can now exercise the newspaper's APIs interactively in a browser console instead of writing throwaway scripts to inspect responses.
Second-order effects
- Lowering the trial-and-error cost of the NYT APIs makes third-party mashups built on Times data cheaper to attempt, widening the funnel of developers who reach working code at all.
Third-order effects
- If Facebook's console becomes the template other API publishers copy, interactive test consoles shift from nice-to-have to table stakes for any organization courting a developer ecosystem — including publishers positioning their archives as programmable data.
The trend: API publishers are converging on Facebook's self-service developer tooling — consoles, not just documentation — as the standard interface for attracting third-party builders.