Rebbbounds

A great little writeup from Dribbble’s lead developer Rich Thornett on the creation of the API and what it means for Dribbble as it grows.

Releasing an API marks the progression of an application from web site to PLATFORM. Even without the caps, it’s a scary transition. Ease of access to your data is accompanied by potential for abuse, new and more difficult-to-predict scaling issues, loss of control over the presentation of your content, the need to define guidelines for usage, etc. It’s a big leap.

It also presents business challenges: If folks start viewing Dribbble through other lenses (iPhone, iPad, etc), are we cannibalizing our own advertising revenue?

As a bonus, it’s got Inception analogies toboot.