There are a lot of great reasons for a company online to offer an Application Programming Interface (API) for outside developers to build on, but one we're starting to see more of is an API as the ultimate recruitment tool.
Red hot lifestreaming service FriendFeed announced this afternoon that the company has hired Benjamin Golub, the creator of FriendFeedToGo, the mobile interface of choice for FF users.
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Golub is also the creator of RSSMeme, a memetracker that tracks the hottest shared stories on Google Reader. We wrote about RSSMeme this spring when that service launched an API of its own.
More obviously relevant to FriendFeed is Golub's project FFToGo.com, which this author uses throughout the day every day. The app does a great job making the native javascript-heavy interface for FriendFeed usable on a mobile phone.
The guy knows how to parse and make usable streams of data that are flying around from user activity. He should fit in very well there.
If you'd like to meet up with ReadWriteWeb staff on FriendFeed, see our profiles there and the RWW Room.
Photo of Golub by Megen Vo.
Can The Fire Still Burn?
We're excited to see what Golub does at FriendFeed, though his distinct work will likely be harder to discern than it was when he was an outsider. When Marco Kaiser, creator of the very popular Twitter interface Twhirl, was the subject of a hire/acquire by video chat service Seesmic in April - we said the coming together offered a vision of the future of the web. That may be, but Twhirl releases feel different now and the app is being replaced on the desktops of many early adopters by the insurgent Tweetdeck.
What will happen to these fireball projects once they are brought into the fold? We hope that at least some of the fire will still burn, but at the very least it's evident that offering and building on an API are good ways to find good developers from around the world and a good way to get a job if you are a very good developer.
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