Netflix Hiring Sr. Software Engineer -- Open APIs
Bill Scott has posted two job openings on his blog, including a Sr. Software Engineer -- Open APIs. The job description confirms that Netflix is working on an open API:
Michael Hart, our Director of Open APIs and Community is looking for an Open APIs Sr. Software Engineer. This is an incredible role. Netflix is in the midst of opening up a suite of developer APIs and you can help make this happen. Get in now and shape the way developers all over hack and mashup Netflix!
What would you do with the Netflix API?
What couldn't you do with a Netflix API (if done right). It's free advertising for Netflix.
* Bloggers could list the latest movies you've watched on their blog with their ratings.
* Bloggers could show their "currently watching."
* Bloggers could show their queue of upcoming films.
* Bloggers could show their wishlists of movies they want to purchase. Maybe something similar to Amazon and a blog reader might be kind enough to purchase it for them as a way of saying "thanks."
Maybe Netflix will be smart about this and allow some kickback for referral subscribers.
Posted by:Todd Rafferty | April 30, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Bloggers can do all that now with existing RSS feeds. Just look to the right of this post and you'll see this blog has "my netflix queue" list.
The API should allow for other people to develop frontends for netflix. People might be able to "queue all movies about hackers" or automatically add movies to their queue if they got more than a "90% fresh" rating from rottentomatos.com. Perhaps someone will write a firefox plugin so you could click on a movie title mentioned on someone elses blog and auto-add it, or throw events notices on twitter.
You could use it as a data source for your own personal dvd library. You could hook up your media player and add all the "Watch it now" movies (which you'll have soon anyway it seems).
Theres a lot to do.
Posted by:Mike | May 02, 2008 at 06:29 PM
There are a *ton* of interesting things that can be done with an API. Already on FeedFlix, we are able to let people understand their rental habits better as well as share their reviews more easily - and FeedFlix's only source now is the RSS feeds.
With the API, it should be possible to get reviewer ranks and star ratings (in addition to reviews). Plus if it is a read+write API, you can be sure people will write better interfaces for managing your account - from changing your queue to writing reviews etc.
The possibilities are endless. Netflix has a gold mine of date. It's going to be interesting what they expose with the API.
Posted by:Raghu Srinivasan | May 05, 2008 at 07:34 PM