the team behind rules.io are leading an open source API framework project called Geekier which is exactly this. Take a look at the details here in Github https://github.com/rulesio/geekier/wiki - there is a link to the Google group for the project as well.
Kin keeps adding great stuff to the community. We're planning our first hackathon for an open source project we're leading and this seems like a great starting point.
Interested in pointing a few customers of rules.io toward a class like this but wondering if anyone has any experience with it? Or perhaps another online class re: cohort analysis?
I realize I'm being idealistic in my stance, but I'm not a fan of going too far either. One thing I'm very happy to see in the EU is the focus on there being a standard. Today it it makes it difficult to manage a globally focused user base with so many different legal requirements. The proposed standard in the EU would make it easy to do business here and have a better framework for cooperation with the US than the safe harbor structure today.
As an American who built several web businesses before moving to Germany 4 years ago, I now shudder at what can be legally done in the US. There is no real perspective of data privacy at all. Now, I often feel that the German (and proposed new EU) standard goes way too far. But, I'm a fan of at least something that can keep such creepy behavior away from identifying users until they identify themselves.
We really think Zapier has done an amazing job in building a gorgeous UI, easy to understand UX and gaining support from the API community. But, obviously they are really well suited for end users and not as much so (in our opinion) for devs needing to talk to a bunch of API's directly. As the need to talk to many API's was at the core of rules.io, it made sense to us to try to gain support from the community for some standards and to contribute descriptions.
Our goal is to really better support the needs of app developers needing to work with many API's rather than the API developer themselves. But we hope to gain support of both.
I'd like to invite you to rules.io if you are interested. We offer both behavior-based segmentation in Mailchimp to make your campaigns more targeted. And, we offer behavior or inactivity-triggered emails - using Sendgrid and Mandrill is coming to let you use your MC templates. And integration is a Ruby gem for RoR apps or simple REST api.
Let me know if I can personally answer any questions - we're in private beta and want to make sure we're solving problems in the right way! Thanks