category: Open API

Vlytics Open API in 2009

by admin at 1:03am, February 4, 2009 | Open API, Vlytics, Voter Contact

Fact: Vlytics will provide some sort of open API for voter files in the 2009 Calendar Year.

As witnessed in political tech articles over the past year both democrat and republican techtivists (what I like to call technology inclined political activists) have been calling for some sort of freely available open API so they can build data driven applications.

If you don’t know what an open API is or what it can do for you than it probably won’t matter to you right away. But down the road an Open API will lead to free mobile apps, google map mashups, and maybe even an easy way to get some basic stats on a district.

For those of you who do know what an open API is, rest assured I want to allow you to be able to pull all sorts of data based on Vlytics Voter Files.

Why is Vlytics doing this? Honestly, not sure yet other than I see a need for freely available data feeds for budding techtivists looking to take campaigns into the next generation. As I hash this idea out I will post here my thoughts and thoughts from others.

I have to be somewhat careful to protect my business model as well as my hosting costs but I see an opportunity here for Vlytics to do something for the techtivist community at large – hey maybe someone will build an App I might want to buy/integrate into the Vlytics platform?

If you want to know when I will release it, what data will be available, and if there will be call limiting than I can tell you those questions aren’t answered yet. I do want to hear from you, just leave a comment below.