Looking for more examples of a particular style of web app that is close to my heart. For lack of a better name, let&#x27;s call them &quot;composable data&quot; apps.<p>These applications have (at their core) two functions: (1) collect a piece of data and (2) expose it in a useful way (usually with an API).<p>They tend to focus on atomic data units of a single type (they don&#x27;t collect just anything).<p>I&#x27;ll try to offer some examples since I think that my description may be unclear.<p>Last.fm (the old site)
  atom: a song listened to
  collection: automatic (scrobbled from media player)
  expose: web app, API<p>Reading.am
  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reading.am
  atom: article that you read
  collection: manual (post to web app), automatic (hooks to Twitter&#x2F;FB&#x2F;etc)
  expose: web app<p>Pinboard.in
  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pinboard.in
  atom: url
  collection: manual (post to web app), automatic (hooks to Twitter&#x2F;FB&#x2F;etc)
  expose: web app, api<p>A good litmus test might be how cleanly they map to IFTTT or Zapier workflows. Looking for the Xs and Ys in &quot;Add X to Y.&quot;<p>--<p>Others to consider:
- Original Twitter? Maybe Twitter&#x27;s atom was a status update (or a thought)
- Original Delicious? Atom was a URL<p>Early Twitter and Delicious are confusing since they were both data repositories and social networks.
Ask HN: Examples of web apps as composable data