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Ask HN: How to promote an API contest?

5 points by catone ↗ HN
The company I work for (as community manager) is running an API contest. We're having difficulty getting the word out to people who might be interested in entering (i.e., people like those in the HN community).

We think we're giving away pretty good prizes, we've gotten listed in contest section at ProgrammableWeb, and we've blogged about it on the company blog and tweeted about it on the company Twitter account as well as on our own.

Yet, we don't have any entries yet (or any API key applications indicating they're for the contest). So what else can we do to get the word out?

9 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread
noodle
a good place to start might be a link so that we could take a look, either to participate or give input based on what you're doing :)
catone
I just didn't want to sound spammy and keep the discussion high level. But since you asked... ;)

http://www.dandyid.org/beta/apicontest

noodle
well, right out of the gate -- i tried making an account and it lets me request an API key. i have absolutely no clue what i want to do with the API key, but to obtain one, it requires me to enter in some committed data.

the lack of API key requests might be due to the fact that someone should probably have an idea they want to work on before they request one. otherwise, i'd have one now.

catone
We just today dropped approval on API key requests -- so they're instant, but we do still require some info (product name/description). We note in the how to enter area of the contest page to just put "API contest entry" in the description field when applying for an API key, but do you think that is still too great a barrier to entry?
noodle
well, i'm just pointing out that i wanted to request one without having any concept for a product. no clue what it would do or what i would call it. just want to have a key so that i could experiment and see what i can do with it.

you're basically saying, we want you to play around with our API, but you're not allowed to play around with it.

saraolive
Thanks for all of your feedback (DandyID co-founder here). The product/url/description can be entered as "N/A" or whatever -- I'm adding this into the subtext of those fields right now. I'm also adding a link to the API documentation from the signup page. Appreciate these ideas!
asmithmd1
The contest looks to be these guys: http://www.dandyid.org

What, exactly, are you offering with your API? A quick look around makes me think you are trying a two-sided sale. First side: get users to create a DandyID to use with all the DandyID enabled sites. Second side: get websites to use your API to let all those users who have created a DandyID sign-up to their site more easily.

From the users perspective it looks like there is exactly one application - a wordpress plugin - so why should I trust some random site with my credentials? So I can then install a wordpress plugin of unknown quality on my server?

From the website side I would guess after you subtract all your test accounts the number of live DandyIDs is in the dozens.

A two sided sale like this is very tough.

At first I thought you were offering the ability to look through all the sites you have aggregated (scraped?) by username - that could be useful. When I saw the need for a DandyID account before the API was useful I realized the API was not very useful.

To your original question: "Apply for an API key" is a little off-putting. If I am cool enough maybe you will give me one? And when you click on the link:

http://www.dandyid.org/beta/apiprofile

you get this:

Whowzers! Lets try that login again. You must be logged in to do that!

I guess if I clicked on that signup link, gave up who knows what kind of info, I could then "Apply" (oh please, please let me in)

but at this point I am gone.

You are essentially asking developers to work for you for free. The developers are doing you a huge favor - you have to have that attitude.

catone
There's sort of a chicken and egg problem for us: the service has more utility for users the more integrating partners we have / the more people who are hooking into our API. And for developers, the service becomes more useful the more users we have (for the most part -- there are some value propositions for some sites where they get utility by pushing data to us, rather than just pulling).

We're working on addressing that by actively pitching to potential integrating partners. But essentially, DandyID is a platform for data portability for social sites. Using our API sites can let users sync their profile and identity graph information across multiple web sites.

We're also working on our user messaging. The "learn more" page on dandyid.org will be replaced soon with something more detailed explaining the benefits to users. :)

--

EDIT: Looks like you added to your post while I was replying. :) To address your other points: Those are really good points, thanks for the feedback. I think the original ideas was not to allow non-users to utilize the API (guess on my part as I wasn't with the company when that decision was made), but perhaps that's a non-issue. Most developers will need to sign up to test what they're making anyway.

As for the other, it's a semantics issue. I guess "Get an API key" (which is what the API application form page actually says), would be better? APIs are granted automatically and instantly (a change we recently implemented)... except for cases when people want to push data back to us, then they need to be white listed on our end, so need to contact us.