What is the gold standard for website APIs? Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc [closed]

Answer 1

AtomPub is the gold standard because it was designed by some of the brightest minds on the internet. You can't go too far wrong using iit as a basis. That is what google and msft does.

Answer 2

I think the best way to answer is to list the characteristics of good web APIs instead of citing examples. If you like Twitter/Facebook/etc APIs, what aspect of these APIs do you find attractive?

I'll take a first stab:

1. Well documented APIs, including constraints and usage policies. This enables rapid development with confidence, instead of second guessing what the parameters might mean, and what return values are.
2. Technology/language agnostic APIs. Good APIs should be easily usable, providing the same functionality, across a wide array of languages and platforms.
3. Well supported APIs. There are always bugs. Responsive maintainers result in more usable APIs
4. Layered API sets. When APIs are neatly layered, a wide range of developers can consume the pieces they need without needing to pull in extraneous layers. As a plus, it forces the creators to think hard about clean and componentized APIs.

Please add more to comments.

Answer 3

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters, a 60 minute Google tech talk by Joshua Bloch, is relevant.