I think Fred has become too focused on the specifics of his recent companies.<p>Is Google programmable? Is Gmail a media and also programmable? Is Amazon playful? That applies even more to the myriad of smaller companies which are successful anyways.<p>Advice #11 : be cautious of advice.
I think that "Software is Media" is one of the most important things we all should have in mind.
Company should fight for something, polarize audience and never ever try to be everything for everybody.<p>We don't see that too much in the marketplace.
"We really think if it’s a read-only API, it might as well be RSS." Corollary: If RSS is sufficient for your read-only API, stick with RSS.<p>Read-write APIs are useful, but proceed with caution. <a href="http://friendfeed.com/gabe/82458dfe/api-design-is-like-sex-make-one-mistake-and" rel="nofollow">http://friendfeed.com/gabe/82458dfe/api-design-is-like-sex-m...</a><p>So far for OurDoings I've only implemented 3rd-party read/write APIs, allowing integration with the Picasa desktop client, ping.fm, and hellotxt. When Pixelpipe approached me about an API I just had them use the ping.fm "custom URL" API I had implemented. But eventually I'll need to make some serious design decisions and create an API that gives read-write access to unique features.
It's ironic that the first thing I did was bookmark this page on delicious because I couldn't read it all right away. As I'm finishing it up later on I notice he's a big fan of delicious.