How a deprecated API can ruin your business (or maybe make it grow)
APIs come and go. If you are a developer you know that, because at some point you have had to re-write some integration. If you are a hustler you probably know that as well, since at some point you probably had to shout at your CTO and apologise to customers.
(Note: We are developers of Blogo — a simple, powerful way to write and manage multiple blogs. This article first appeared on our blog, where we regularly share our thoughts on product, writing and blogging.)
Four days ago (26 May 2015) the API nightmare struck again. Google shutdown ClientLogin, its old Account Authentication API, after a three-year deprecation policy.
Blogo supports Blogger as do lots of writing and publishing apps. Even though we are not caught in this mess, we have learned. In fact, we are still learning a lot about how third party components can impact business.
Since the shutdown, dozens of apps stopped working overnight and, as a result, thousands of users lost their favorite way to blog.
Windows Live Writer is one example. It’s one of the most critical cases to users as there are no planned updates since Microsoft discontinued the software back in 2011. It’s not a game-changer for Microsoft, but it’s a real problem for many entrepreneurs and developers who use Live Writer.
Developers could have prevented this
As a product developer, it’s annoying to have to deal with changes in environments that we do not control. We’ve dealt with the risks we undertake every day and would like to have the security of having no problems like this, but this is part of the game.
But what especially gets my attention is the fact that Google announced the end of the old authentication API in 2012. They also published three months ago on Google’s Developers Blog a reminder about the shutdown. Developers had enough time to adapt to the changes; many did not. Miscommunication or developers’ oversight?
This also presents a great opportunity
For products that already support the new API as we do, this means new users could discover us and–who knows?–give us their loyalty forever. I don’t consider this an ideal opportunity, as many developers didn’t know of the change. At the end of the day, this is not good for the community.
But we have received several emails from users over the past couple days who have decided to test our application. We’ll offer a discount of 30% for a limited time, as an incentive for users to choose Blogo as their new blogging app for Mac.
Sharing the results
Besides the price change, we will communicate to our users and join discussions on forums, Google groups and Reddit threads about the deprecation of ClientLogin. We’ll even publish specific content to help those who are having trouble with other apps and track social networks in search of patterns.
In the coming days we will share the results of these actions here. Stay tuned and keep blogging.
Written by Amure Pinho, Co-Founder and CEO @ Blogo. This article was originally published at blog.getblogo.com. Blogo helps writers and bloggers to tell stories with a simple, powerful way to write and manage multiple blogs.
