If APIs are “crack cocaine for developers,” as Mashery CEO Oren Michels said to us, then Michels is a dealer. His company specializes in creating and managing APIs for companies from Netflix and MTV Networks to Etsy and Cafe Press, and has recently published a survey on how developers use APIs. Whether for pleasure as a side project or for serious profit as an entrepreneurial endeavor, developers love to use APIs. At Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, we chatted with Michaels about best practices for monetization, strategies for building on someone else’s platform, how to survive in a rollercoaster-like ecosystem of third-party apps, and other topics of concern to API-happy developers. In polling more than 550 mobile and web app developers at SXSW Interactive two months ago, Mashery unearthed a wealth of information about how we use APIs. Google(), Twitter and Amazon were said to have the best offerings for third-party devs, and many devs told Mashery what they wanted most was more clarity on API terms of use and code samples. http://mashable.com/2010/05/12/mashery-apis/