Shaun Inman is the creator of Mint. He gave a presentation at the Future Of Web Apps (futureofwebapps) conference, held in London on Wednesday 8th February. It was a short presentation with little elaboration of the 10 reasons, followed by a lengthy Q&A session.

An API takes a good thing and makes it better. API must not change.

API allows external extension of your application. A plugin architecture allows internal extension.

The 10 reasons are:

• Increase brand awareness

• Allow users to own their data

• Build goodwill with developers

• A perfect excuse for a community

• Solving programming problems with an API in mind can improve code quality

• Simplify internal reuse of data

• Allow others to extend the functionality of your application

• Alternate input mechanisms

• Unanticipated applications of your data

• Turn your program into a platform

  The initial Mint release only supported Firefox and Safari (not IE), to cut down on the support calls by only having technical users.

  See also Larsz’s mind map.