Notable API Products That Are Shaping the API Landscape
Gain insight into the significance and impact of influential API products in shaping the API landscape.
We'll cover the following...
Most ride-sharing companies use the Google Maps API in the background. E-commerce stores use APIs to update tracking information on orders and send shipping notifications to their customers. Services such as Shopify are built on a layer further abstracted where sellers don’t have to make API integrations themselves, but are offered the Shopify marketplace platform for e-commerce, which comes with nearly all the e-commerce-related integrations prebuilt. Shopify integrates with PayPal using APIs, so the seller needs to provide their credentials for Shopify to connect with a PayPal account for their Shopify store.
These are some prominent API-first companies:
Twilio
Printful
Twitter
Tealium
Plaid
IMDB
Amazon Selling Partner API
Postman
Marqeta
Let’s take a look at each of them and see how they position and support their products.
Twilio
Twilio is a cloud communications platform that enables developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, and perform other communication functions using its web service APIs.
Twilio has revolutionized authentication, two-factor authentication (2FA), as more users know what SMS and email codes are. Twilio has had a significant impact on the API industry by making it easy for developers to integrate communication functionality into their applications without having to build and maintain the underlying infrastructure. This has led to the creation of a wide variety of innovative communication-enabled apps and services. Additionally, Twilio’s pay-as-you-go pricing model has made it accessible to small and large businesses alike.
Twilio uses web service APIs for programmable communication, such as making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication operations. Twilio’s API offerings across SMS, WhatsApp, voice, video, and email provide the building blocks to design highly customized and sophisticated customer interaction workflows. More than a million developers use Twilio, along with countless large brands.
Twilio’s voice and video APIs were instrumental in enabling developers to build video applications that supported thousands of businesses that came online during the pandemic. The healthcare industry benefited the most by building secure voice and video applications to serve the community.
User verification is one of Twilio’s most comprehensive ...