A standard way to format data to make it easier for sending and receiving information. Suppose we have information about some resource we care about — if we were Facebook it might be a user, in a CRM it might be a customer, in a Pokemon game it might be a Pokemon. You could format this data to present it to a user or computer in any number of ways: a raw text description, in a spreadsheet, etc.

JSON is just one of these formats. It would be a nightmare if everything that shared information (e.g. an API sending information and a website receiving it) used a different format. JSON is just a standard way for clients to send and receive data to each other. Here's some example JSON:{ "manufacturer" : "Tesla", "model" : "Model X", "horsepower" : 259, "color" : "black", "electric" : true, "owner" : { "name" : "Elon Musk", "age" : 46 }} The Permutive API accepts and responds with JSON-formatted data. For example, when the SDK sends an event for a user to the API, it formats the event as JSON before sending it to the API.