Microsoft: Web platform under construction

In a technique well employed at Google and Yahoo, Microsoft next week at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles will publish the application programming interfaces (APIs) to its MSN properties.

Some of the APIs, such as those for MSN Messenger, have been requested for a long time, Microsoft executives told CNET News.com on Thursday. But efforts to open up the company's Web sites to outside developers are set to accelerate, they said.

That's because there is growing interest among developers to build Web applications that can mash-up data from different sites, such as Virtual Earth, or deliver information from public Web sites to existing desktop apps. And Microsoft does not have a deaf ear to this developer trend, which people call the programmable Web or Web 2.0.

"The developer platform is just in the DNA of Microsoft, it's something we think about in everything we do," said Adam Sohn, a spokesperson for MSN. "It's early on in the game of the online services bit in terms of comprehensive platform offerings. Yeah, we have some competition but we know how to compete in the platform business."

Behind the company's efforts to invite developers to its "APIs in the sky," there is coordination among the MSN properties and Microsoft's developer division, according to company bloggers. The Atlas toolkit for making Ajax-style interactive Web applications, in particular, is geared at Web developers.

Next week's PDC promises a bit more info on Microsoft's "Web as a platform" strategy. To get a flavor, Microsoft evangelist and blogger Robert Scoble interviewed two members of the Start.com team for this Channel 9. Start.com, an MSN incubator site, is using the Ajax-style development for building interactive Web front ends that pull data from the Internet. While Start.com itself is geared at consumers, the makers of the site invite developers to "party on our platform"