A Webpage is Not An API or a Platform (The Populicio.us Remix):
"
A few months ago in my post
GMail Domain Change Exposes Bad Design and Poor Code, I wrote
Repeat after me, a web page is not an API or a platform.
It seems some people are still learning this lesson the hard way.
In the post The danger of
running a remix service Richard MacManus writes
Populicio.us was a service
that used data from social bookmarking site del.icio.us, to create a site with
enhanced statistics and a better variety of 'popular' links.
However the Populicio.us service has just been taken off air,
because its developer can no longer get the required information
from del.icio.us. The developer of
Populicio.us wrote:
'Del.icio.us doesn't serve its homepage as it did and I'm not
able to get all needed data to continue Populicio.us. Right now
Del.icio.us doesn't show all the bookmarked links in the homepage
so there is no way I can generate real statistics.'
This plainly illustrates the danger for remix or mash-up service
providers who rely on third party sites for their data. del.icio.us
can not only giveth, it can taketh away.
It seems Richard Macmanus has missed the point. The
issue isn't depending on a third party site for data. The problem
is depending on screen scraping their HTML webpage. An API is a
service contract which is unlikely to be broken without warning. A
web page can change depending on the whims of the web master or
graphic designer behind the site.
Versioning APIs is hard enough, let alone trying to
figure out how to version an HTML website so screen scrapers are
not broken. Web 2.0 isn't about screenscraping. Turning the Web
into an online platform isn't about legitimizing bad practices from
the early days of the Web. Screen scraping needs to die a horrible
death. Web APIs and Web feeds are the way of the future.
"
(Via Dare Obasanjo
aka Carnage4Life.)
Amen!