Mashery Presents at Mashup University

Clay and I made Mashery's first public presentation today, in a session at Mashup University, the pre-un-conference being held in connection with Mashup Camp.

Mashery's goal is to help web service providers build effective and profitable developer programs around their APIs. When we launch, we'll offer a unified set of hosted services that vendors can use to build, promote and support their developer programs. In our Mashup University session today and in conversations I had with attendees afterwards, it was clear that a robust developer community is a key catalyst for an API program to achieve the vendor's desired results, whether they are feature growth, user acquisition, market growth into new verticals, or direct profits from the API itself.

We're confident that Mashery can build a better, more feature-rich and more economical developer infrastructure than most providers can individually. Like any other outsourced service, Mashery will allow vendors to concentrate on what they're best at - innovating, providing great web services, and growing their businesses. They won't need to spend time and efforts deploying, integrating and managing community tools or sophisticated API control systems.

Initially, we'll provide a set of components to build an API documentation and support site. These will include blog, forum, and wikis, all configurable and manageable by the API vendor and accessible by any developers...and all free. Is this rocket science? Of course not. But having a unified system with common login, fully brandable and skinnable by the API provider, is more than a convenience for the vendor. Several developers mentioned that they would be more likely to develop using APIs that had consistent documentation and an active, participatory community than those that lacked such features.

Over the next several months, we'll be launching additional tools and services that offer vendors a complete turnkey developer program. We'll have more information to share on that soon. Meanwhile, if you're coming to Mashup Camp, by all means say hi. The whole Mashery team will be around for most of camp. And to all the developers attending - good luck on the Best Mashup Contest! We're one of the sponsors, and I have a beautiful new Black MacBook to give to someone who builds something intensely cool!

Comments

[James Gross]

You da man Oren!