When Threesomes Go Bad

At Cloudmanic we have built 3 products that enhanced another company's platform. Two of them are in the bitbucket and the third, Photomanic, is lightly maintained and we have no plans to expand the offering. The secret to so little success is to build with third party applications is that when you build on someone else's platform you are not in charge — the platform provider is.

The Rise and Fall of Third Party APIs

I have been around the block a few times so I have seen the pattern I am about to describe again and again. A young, perky company tries to get noticed, bending over backwards to make developing on its platform easy and enticing to outside developers. Until one day the company grows up to the point that it can justify making changes ostensibly for the greater good. Said changes often include discontinuing parts of the company's API, changing the terms of service, and new-found zeal for micromanaging the applications built on the company's platform. As a developer you suddenly go from feeling like a partner contributing to a community to a flunky of the platform provider.

How My Love Affair With Evernote Came to an End

All 3 of the products Cloudmanic built on a third party platform were based on Evernote. Because good software applications take a lot of time to build, when we started developing the first product, Evermanic, we discussed our intentions with the Evernote team. We were assured that Evernote would help market the finished app and that we were building within the company's terms of service. In other words, we were partners. And after months of work and tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, we were ready to take our partnership to the next level, to be part of the company's app marketplace.

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