There’s a very famous The Far Side comic that you’ve probably seen hanging in a doctor’s office. It simply displays the front door of building, over which hangs a sign that reads, ‘School For the Gifted.’ Beneath the sign, a chubby nerd struggles to push open a door that clearly reads Pull. It’s a concise illustration of irony, the human condition, and the API. When it comes to Application Program Interfaces, it’s all about Push & Pull.
The concept of Push & Pull is rudimentary. Data exists in one place and needs to be displayed in another. It wasn’t so easy back in the stone age of technology, though – as software giants like IBM, Microsoft, and SAP built their businesses on installing unwieldy proprietary technology that didn’t play nice in the sandbox with anything. Updating was costly and time consuming. Integrating a new piece of software – heaven forbid from a third-party developer – was something that could cause ripples throughout an enterprise.
Along came the API and Software As A Service (SaaS) technology. An industry was transformed. All of a sudden, a round peg could fit into a square hole. Push & Pull allows that round peg/square hole connection. So how does Synthesio fit into this equation? We fit in the middle…
Our platform is constantly pulling data through various APIs – whether social, mainstream, open, or paid – these data feeds are the pipes that feed billions of posts into our data archives. It comes from different sources, but the common language of API protocols allows our developers to build a round hole for each round peg. In even simpler terms, it’s a constant process of fetching, storing, and displaying data.
We have our own API that powers our partner integration and that API is all about Push. Our clients use our partner integrations in two primary ways. The first is in a customer service capacity, working with our partners Spredfast, Hootsuite, and Conversocial. Each SaaS partner has their own software for engaging users and tracking conversations on owned social channels, but their clients often need further reach when it comes to listening capabilities. This is where the Synthesio API comes in. Each partner has essentially built a round hole to fit our round peg. So, we can push all the mentions relevant to a particular topic, user, or brand into each partner’s engagement dashboards.
We’ve also got partnerships with the two giants in the CRM and MAP landscape, Salesforce and Marketo. Again, Synthesio’s API pushes data, but in this case, the round holes in Salesforce and Marketo are now enriched leads – as mentions from social channels get matched to existing names in the database.
So, our API has the power to expand the breadth of monitored content, ease customer service engagement processes, and supercharge leads and customer profiles with details from social activities. When push comes to shove, that seems pretty powerful.
To learn more about Synthesio’s digital marketing ecosystem and how our SaaS platform works, request a demo below.
