@John – thanks for commenting

I guess I’m not quite saying “API vs Linked Data” from a technical perspective – I’m starting to understand that – er – I don’t actually really understand what the differences are in any great depth 🙂

The comparison was less technical, more: “Hey, I can do API’s but I can’t do Linked Data. Help me understand why”

In terms of making datasets easier to find and less source-specific: agree, this seems absolutely key. But at the same time, and calling back to your “perception” point – it seems to me telling that there is a thriving community around lightweight web-based API’s (see the hoardes of examples at http://www.programmableweb.com/) and very little around RDF/LD. This may be a matter of time (although as I say, it’s not like these approaches haven’t been around since the dawn of the web) but IMO is more about too much complexity. This is what concerns me.