The community’s open source sensibilities and commitment to maintaining the free dissemination of digital files makes it an easy first stop for anyone looking for a 3D printing project, DIY 3D printer or just a cool model. Despite the primary motivation for Thingiverse seemingly not being the generation of cash, that doesn’t mean that MakerBot and their parent company don’t take the place seriously. Thingiverse is primarily a social media platform aimed at a pretty specific crowd, and they wouldn’t attract loyal users if they didn’t give them reasons to keep coming back. And based on a new announcement that MakerBot is making today, it looks like they really want to give their users a lot more reasons to keep coming back.
Today MakerBot has announced the upcoming launch of a brand new enhanced developer program so users can create and integrate all sorts of new tools, services and functionalities into Thingiverse. The new tools will offer prospective developers access to a ton more data, and will be offering them new freedoms to design and create all kinds of new tools. MakerBot is currently looking for new partners and developers to bring fresh ideas to the table, and they seem to be looking for applications, user and designer features and mobile apps specifically.
The new Developer Program is focusing their efforts to enable new app development in three areas. Thingiverse will be opening up entirely new types of functionalities so developers can build completely new features for community designers and end users. They will be enabling new levels of customization tools, print fulfilment features and 3D modeling utilities on individual Thing pages. And the new developer tools will allow for app and features to be created in a closed, sandboxed environment that will be supported by completely rewritten documentation.
There is another possibility of course, it is possible that Thingiverse is thinking of adding the ability to monetize the site. To me that seems counterintuitive to the very reason Thingiverse is so popular, but Stratasys has been losing a lot of money recently so they may be looking to generate revenue anywhere that they can find. However turning Thingiverse into an actual marketplace where designers can sell their models may not be very well received by the community. But we’re not going to know anything until the first wave of developers get to play around with the new tools. If you’re interested in developing Thingiverse apps and want to contribute you can sign up here to receive more information, so that upon the launch interested parties will be set up and ready to go with contributions. Discuss in the New Thingiverse 3D Program forum over at 3DPB.com.