Kiva has announced the new API at build.kiva.
You can tell I am a bit behind, as their Introduced the Kiva API 5 days ago, but you know, better later than never.
The Kiva API begins as a set of RESTful web services, focused primarily on the tasks of fetching public data from Kiva.
They already posted a few ideas, which are mostly tracking what happens – but everything starts out like that on the net, so I am confident we will see some more transaction oriented ideas too. My favourite ide is the “integrate it with a map”, but I am afraid in the first wave we will see a lot of “tweet your loan” apps.
And they take – at least so far – a rather community oriented approach to the whole API thing as their Welcome to the build.kiva.org post states
Moreover, this is a place where you can help us shape the Kiva API. ?You’ll find our API roadmap and evolving designs on our Wiki, and we expect these to change in direct response to your participation in the community. This site is yours too – let us know what needs to change and how we can make it a more powerful tool for everyone building Kiva. ?(If you like what you see so far, help us give thanks to our designer-friend, Omar Lee.)
Yes, they started an build.kiva blog, so you can follow on the events – grab the RSS Feed if you are interested. I think there will be a lot of really cool apps soon, and hopefully the site will get a lot of exposure.