Report: Wolfram Alpha to offer API for data feeds

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(Credit: Screenshot by Dave Rosenberg/CNET)

Wolfram Alpha, the "computational knowledge engine" developed by Mathematica, will soon allow its dynamic search results to be queried and mashed up in a variety of new ways.

According to the Guardian, Wolfram will be opening its curated data to be queried via an application programming interface, or API. Currently, you can view results in a browser, export them as a PDF, or "play" them using a Mathematica plug-in. The ability to use the data on other sites and for other means, such as computations in spreadsheets, is appealing, if not earth-shattering.

Wolfram's launch fanfare was followed by much confusion about what Wolfram actually is. One thing that's clear is that the service has an impressive amount of data. What's not clear is if and when it will ever make money.

APIs are at least a good start in relation to monetization--holding the Alpha data captive within its site meant that it would never go beyond its own traffic, a recipe for disappointment and counter to the link economy that has been built around sites like Twitter.

In today's socialized Internet, APIs to your data are the barrier (or door) to getting users hooked on your data. Regardless of whether through an API that controls a cloud service like Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), or the ability to get communications in and out of Facebook, users want to consume data in the way they feel most comfortable. Any company that creates or aggregates data needs to make it available, if it expects to ever hit critical mass.

CNET News' Tom Krazit recently wrote about a licensing deal between Microsoft's Bing "decision engine" and Wolfram Alpha (two non-search engines join up to create a super search engine?) that "allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates."

If Microsoft is serious about taking on Google's geek factor, and asserting its dominant position in spreadsheets and higher education as Bing grows, then the data from Wolfram adds a new dimension. From the consumer perspective, the more informed the data is, the better, but both Bing and Alpha have a long way to go to catch up to Google.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

[Daniel_Tunkelang]

Back in March when I first had a "sneak preview" of Wolfram Alpha, I urged them to focus less on the natural-language interface and instead focus on APIs that would enabled structured access to their structured content:

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/03/31/wolfram-alpha-first-hand-impressions/

Sadly, they went down a path of emphasizing the natural-language interface, and I think the consensus is that the result has been a cute demo with little actual utility. I can't tell from this announcement if they've reconsidered in light of this result--the big question is whether the API will promote structured access or just be a wrapper around their current natural-language web interface. The former could make the service a boon for developers; the latter would just be another gimmick.

[daveisdigital]

Um, the company is Wolfram Research and their principle product is Mathematica. Wolfram Alpha is simply the name of their new project.

[lahontancut]

No, Wolfram|Alpha is a separate company from Wolfram Research as well as a product name and brand.

[Kimsh]

I am surprised that people still claim there is a significant difference between Google seach and Bing. The only significant differences I have seen in a long time is the lack of accuracy in Google maps.

[mashlogic]

A Wolfram|Alpha API has the potential to be quite useful for scientific applications.

From a recent conversation with them I gathered that they will charge for the API, so there's your monetization strategy. For our purposes, paying for API requests is a deterrent.

I look forward to seeing some of these integrations in action.