Developer Marketing and Relations News - March 2016

API shutdowns and poor provider behavior all over the place:

• PayPal-owned Venmo abruptly shut down access to its API, then clarified it was only closing off to new developers, not existing users
  

• Spotify's got plenty of poor API management practices going on, breaking apps and going silent, according to developer Stein Magnus Jodal
  

• Kimono Labs got purchased, and gave developers just 2 weeks' notice its service was closing
  

• The API Evangelist, Kin Lane, summed things up succinctly with his post, "Extracting As Much Value From Your API Developers As You Can, Then Screwing Them Over in The End"

In other acquisition news:

• From the "Unsurprising" file, Microsoft is buying cross-platform tool provider Xamarin
  

• Meanwhile, Microsoft also said it was shutting down its Android-to-Windows porting tool, pointing developers to Xamarin

Spreading the word:

• Nordic APIs took a look at A Day in the Life of an API Developer Evangelist
  

• Dev evangelist supreme Phil Leggetter attempts to define exactly what developer relations is

New product and service launches:

• Cyanogen announced MOD, an app platform for its Android-based Cyanogen OS
  

• IBM launched Quarks, an open-source tool for analyzing sensor data from IoT edge devices
  

• Amazon released Lumberyard, a free game engine that integrates with its AWS and Twitch services
  

• Visa launched its developer program and a set of APIs
  

• Raspberry Pi launched its latest device, the Raspberry Pi 3, featuring big improvement gains, but still priced at $35

Tagged: #March2016