This document summarizes the history and current state of Active.com, a company that produces data about events, classes, memberships, and other activities. It traces Active.com's growth from the late 1990s to today, including acquisitions of other companies. In 2009, Active.com opened its data through an API to business partners and developers in order to build the world's largest directory of things to do. This led to over 130 registered API users generating additional traffic and partnerships for Active.com. The document promotes further engagement with Active.com's developer community and API.

1. Intro
Opening Active Data
Jeremy Thomas
Director of Product Development, Active.com

2. About Active.com
Circa 1998: La Jolla, CA
Map provided by Google Maps

3. About Active.com
1020 Prospect Street
Map provided by Google Maps

4. About Active.com
Circa 1999…

5. About Active.com
Circa 2000…

6. About Active.com
Then we upgraded (circa 2003)…

7. About Active.com
And again (circa 2007)…

8. About Active.com
Which brings us to today

9. The Chiefs
Active is run by these guys:

10. Acquisitions
And they’ve acquired a few companies
over the years:

11. About Active.com
2009: North America, China Australia, UK
Map provided by Google Maps

12. Data
Together we are called , and we
produce a lot of data.
– Events
– Event Reviews
– Classes
– Training Plans
– Registrant Details
– Leagues
– Memberships
– High school Sports Rankings
– Race Results
– Campsites
– Hunting/Fishing licensing

13. More Data
• Over 500,000 events are added to active.com
annually.
• We process over 40,000,000 transactions per year
(event registrations, hunting/fishing license purchases,
etc.).
• We rank 99% of high school football and lacrosse
teams in the United States
• We rank in Comescore’s top 10 sports properties.
• We serve over 1,000,000,000 page views/year.

14. Closed Data
Most of this data
was protected and
closed.

15. Open Data
But we needed it to be more open.

16. Why Open Data?
Prime Directive: Build the World’s Largest
Directory of Things to Do

17. Why Open Data?
Cross-silo communication

18. Why Open Data?
Integration with Business Partners.

19. Internal Campaign
To do this, I had to talk to this guy about
our options.

20. Internal Campaign
And he was convinced by:
• the “head” and
“shoulder” argument
(borrowed from Oren
Michaels), not the
Longtail Argument
• Easier Divisional
Integration

21. Internal Campaign
So we worked with Mashery to setup an API
Gateway.

22. Open for Businesses
We opened the API to business partners.
I tweeted the fact that we were working on
an API, and…

23. Programmableweb.com
The community became interested.
Somebody put us on
programmableweb.com (it wasn’t me).
http://www.programmableweb.com/api/active

24. Developer Community
And they tweeted about the possibilities.
http://twitter.com/dtyler21/status/790344865

25. Developer Community
They wanted to build:
– race calendars
– mountain biking websites
– iPhone event search apps
– high school sports ranking widgets
– tennis tournament finders
– things to do near you widgets
– campground finders

26. Developer Community
So what do we do with
these developers who are
interested in our data?

27. Community
Talk this guy, ,into opening the door to a
few of them to see what happens.

28. Community
We screen every API key
request.

29. Open for Developers
• With no formal marketing, we have over 130
Registered API users since March, 2009.
• Developer-originated traffic is a bonus, but will
have material impact (5-10% increase in
pageviews) in 2010 through:
– Increased publicity through social media.
– API-focused B2B relationships through targeted
content distribution.
– Stronger API portfolio including easy to consume
widgets.
– Self-sustaining API community.

30. Active.com API
Thanks!
Jeremy Thomas
Director of Product Development, Active.com
twitter.com/jgrahamthomas
community.active.com/blogs/productdev
Several photos came from istockphoto.com, and the maps on slide 2 and 3 are from Google. Old screenshots came
from archive.org.