Objectives of knowledge management

Application programming interfaces (APIs)
Traditionally, organisations have sought to keep proprietary information within their 
firewalls for security reasons and to protect their intellectual property. But in the Internet 
era, this strategy may limit opportunities to add value to their services or share informa-
tion via other online companies and their web services to increase their potential reach. 
Here are some examples from retail, publishing and software companies where APIs, 
sometimes known as the ‘Programmable Web’, have been used to help gain competitive 
advantage:
● 
Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com). One example of AWS allows affiliates, 
developers and website publishers to use Amazon Product Discovery which enables other 
sites to incorporate data about Amazon products and pricing.
● 
Facebook and Twitter use their APIs to help other sites embed social content into their 
sites.
● 
The Guardian Newspaper Open Platform (www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform) enables 
sharing of content and statistics from The Guardian. 
● 
Google APIs exist for a number of its services, most notably Google Maps which, accord-
ing to this directory (www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory), is one of the most 
popular mashups created through an API. The Google Analytics API has enabled many 
businesses and third- party application developers to visualise web performance data in a 
more tailored way.
● 
Kayak is an aggregator which allows third- party sites to integrate kayak.com searches and 
results into their website, desktop application or mobile phone application.