Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About APIs*
4/2/2013
*But Were Afraid to Ask
If you travel in a particularly boring crowd, you may hear a lot these days about "APIs" – getting another company’s API, one business taking another business’s API – generally, the whole gamut of API-ness. And yet, you know you’ve been faking it when you don’t really know what the acronym stands for, and you’re afraid to ask, because that’s kind of like having to ask for help from the AV squad when the film strip broke in 7th grade. And for all of you who don’t know what a film strip is, you should know that if you want to buy one, you’ll probably be using an API.
So… here’s the answer to the question you were afraid to ask: API stands for Application Programming Interface.
What? Not Clear Yet?
So… before you get even more afraid to ask: APIs are a mechanism by which one website (or software application) communicates with another. This bit of technology magic that’s come to flower in the past few years makes business partnerships flourish commercially on the web in ways unimaginable not very long ago.
From the earliest days of the STAR System, we’ve been committed to the concept of providing wide access to our STAR System ticket inventory. The secret to this has been APIs. We’ve got a lot of them working at once, in ways which may not be so obvious:
So when you see instantly transactionable Broadway tickets on sale on some Brazilian or French or Korean website, coming from actual live box office inventory, there’s a good chance it’s through our API. And now when you see tickets sold on a powerful deal site like Living Social, we use the same API.
In case the benefits don’t seem obvious, when travel sites and deal sites use our API, that means that shows don't need to provide allocations to engage a big partner, and that helps shows maintain a fully open online box office inventory to all potential buyers, no matter where they come from.
What Does the Future Hold?
Right now, Shubert Ticketing is developing the next generation distribution API, which will give our marketing partners much more power and functionality than ever before. For the first time, our new “Preferred Partner API” will provide inventory down to the last seat in all sections of the theatre. The customers of our distribution partners will be able to see their actual seats (rather than just sections of the theatre) before purchasing. And all sections of the theatre, from the balcony to premium locations, will become available. In essence, much of the power of the STAR System and Telecharge will become even more available to hundreds of national and international brands that are eager to sell theatre tickets more robustly.
And the API isn’t just for websites. With this powerful tool, we’re working with businesses that want to write to our API for mobile applications, social applications, smart TV applications, kiosks… the list goes on and on.
So although you may not have known what an API is before, you can be sure that APIs are changing the game for live event ticketing. Or for buying a filmstrip projector.
*But Were Afraid to Ask
If you travel in a particularly boring crowd, you may hear a lot these days about "APIs" – getting another company’s API, one business taking another business’s API – generally, the whole gamut of API-ness. And yet, you know you’ve been faking it when you don’t really know what the acronym stands for, and you’re afraid to ask, because that’s kind of like having to ask for help from the AV squad when the film strip broke in 7th grade. And for all of you who don’t know what a film strip is, you should know that if you want to buy one, you’ll probably be using an API.
So… here’s the answer to the question you were afraid to ask: API stands for Application Programming Interface.
What? Not Clear Yet?
So… before you get even more afraid to ask: APIs are a mechanism by which one website (or software application) communicates with another. This bit of technology magic that’s come to flower in the past few years makes business partnerships flourish commercially on the web in ways unimaginable not very long ago.
From the earliest days of the STAR System, we’ve been committed to the concept of providing wide access to our STAR System ticket inventory. The secret to this has been APIs. We’ve got a lot of them working at once, in ways which may not be so obvious:
- Our Broadway Inbound wholesale ticketing division communicates directly via an API with the STAR box office inventory to continuously monitor availability.
- Broadway Inbound passes that availability information along to marketing partners, via its own distribution API. This enables distribution clients like Expedia to list only the events which have available seats.
- Broadway Inbound’s API also offers the ability for distribution clients to place orders, enabling those sites to sell tickets in real time from their own websites, with their own look and feel.
So when you see instantly transactionable Broadway tickets on sale on some Brazilian or French or Korean website, coming from actual live box office inventory, there’s a good chance it’s through our API. And now when you see tickets sold on a powerful deal site like Living Social, we use the same API.
In case the benefits don’t seem obvious, when travel sites and deal sites use our API, that means that shows don't need to provide allocations to engage a big partner, and that helps shows maintain a fully open online box office inventory to all potential buyers, no matter where they come from.
What Does the Future Hold?
Right now, Shubert Ticketing is developing the next generation distribution API, which will give our marketing partners much more power and functionality than ever before. For the first time, our new “Preferred Partner API” will provide inventory down to the last seat in all sections of the theatre. The customers of our distribution partners will be able to see their actual seats (rather than just sections of the theatre) before purchasing. And all sections of the theatre, from the balcony to premium locations, will become available. In essence, much of the power of the STAR System and Telecharge will become even more available to hundreds of national and international brands that are eager to sell theatre tickets more robustly.
And the API isn’t just for websites. With this powerful tool, we’re working with businesses that want to write to our API for mobile applications, social applications, smart TV applications, kiosks… the list goes on and on.
So although you may not have known what an API is before, you can be sure that APIs are changing the game for live event ticketing. Or for buying a filmstrip projector.