Ask HN: Any good examples of open APIs?

1 point·desouzt··4 comments

Hi guys,

I've been asked to do a little research around APIs. Specifically I am after companies (could be banks and other leading organisations) and startups that have open APIs and as a result what types of services are then enabled to the customer.

Any help would be appreciate! Thanks!

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Hopefully I'm understanding correctly. I'm assuming "open access" means available for anyone to use. Below are a few examples.

Facebook (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/apis/)

GitHub (http://developer.github.com/v3/)

Twitter (https://dev.twitter.com/)

For an open source project, with an open API, take a look at musicbrainz, they're used extensively in the music industry.

If you're looking for open as just openly available, you've been given a bunch of other examples already.

Please define: What do you mean by open API? Open access? Open source project with an API?

My knowledge is a little ropey so I apologise in advance if this doesn't make sense. I believe it is the former - open access. For example, if a bank wanted to allow banking to be done via Facebook then they'd need to open up APIs. Or if a hospital wanted to introduce a chat forum for doctors to be able to pose questions to one another then are there examples of companies whose API's would allow them to plug that chat forum in seamlessly without having to build their own chat forum. I wondered if there were any good examples of companies that demonstrated this.

Sorry if the above doesn't make sense!

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