# The Web STP Challenge: Making APIs Useful

By [Continuations](https://continuations.com) · 2011-04-05

api, stp, namespace, mapping

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STP stands for Straight Through Processing and is a term that comes from the financial services industry.  Wikipedia provides a simple [definition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_Through_Processing)

> \[STP\] enables the entire trade process for capital markets and payment transactions to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention (…)

We need more STP for the web so that we have fewer stove pipe services and can move to a seamless web instead.  The obstacle is no longer a lack of APIs – lots of services have APIs that support writes. 

Instead, the problem is one of a lack of data mapping/unification services.  Chris Dixon nailed this in a recent [tweet](http://twitter.com/#!/cdixon/status/49906284492881920):

> data mashups require common namespaces. w/o common namespaces (or mappings across) of people, venues, products etc, data will remain siloed

As with any challenge this also represents an opportunity.  There are a number of startups emerging that are addressing these problems, such as [SimpleGeo](http://simplegeo.com) (places), [Qwerly](http://qwerly.com) (people) and [FluidInfo](http://fluidinfo.com) (anything).

If you have a startup or know of one that is working on this problem (and should be mentioned here), I would love to learn more about it!

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*Originally published on [Continuations](https://continuations.com/the-web-stp-challenge-making-apis-useful)*