

Google+ API Launch Still Months Away - jdp23
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/google-api-launch-still-months-away/

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lucisferre
This is disappointing news. Watching G+ was a bit like watching a wave crash
and roll back. My twitter feed actually slowed down for a few days while
everyone played with the new kid, only to pick right back up again.

The great thing about G+ is it seems to be popular with a few really
interesting people I like to follow who post more to G+ than they did on
Twitter. However the lack of an API is preventing wider use and adoption.
Right now there is no convenient way to say integrate your own blog and while
I actually use the twitter website a lot more now, 3rd party tools are still
the most popular way for people to organize their multiple social networks
together..

Of course I realize API integration has it's dark side too, mostly in the form
of spammers, but it's a small price to pay for having a more active community.

~~~
AndrewDucker
I agree.

Google+ got a lot of momentum, and then it all slowed to a crawl. And once the
real names stuff broke, and got it a bunch of bad press, the traffic seemed to
slow to a crawl over there.

I worry that they're going to leave it too late - that by the time they have a
product worth having they'll have lost their customer base.

~~~
jdp23
They certainly seem to have thrown away a lot of their advantage from the
brilliantly-executed launch. If they had followed up quickly, and avoided the
real names rathole, they were on track for a huge success. Now it'll be a much
tougher path. I still think it'll be at least semi-successful, but it doesn't
seem as likely to take significant market share away from Facebook or Twitter
any time soon.

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pavel_lishin
So, are there any ghetto homebrew APIs that just talk to Google+ via POST and
GET requests? I've found something that lets me crosspost something to both
twitter and Facebook, and it's annoying having to do it explicitly in Google+
as a separate action.

~~~
brlewis
See the penultimate paragraph of the article.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Looks like that just reads Google+ data, but doesn't actually post anything
back to it.

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wavephorm
Shouldn't they have started with an API? Facebook tacked on their API later
and look how well that's worked. Facebook's API is horrible, just figuring out
how to use the login system is extremely painful.

Google should have built an API first, and built their own Google+ website on
it.

~~~
pestaa
Any time I work with a Google API I am literally surprised how beautifully
engineered they are.

I trust Google on this one too -- so much in fact, I believe they already have
such an API that the website is interacting with, it is just not mature enough
to be publicly accessible.

~~~
georgemcbay
Agreed 100%. The only issue I have with Google APIs is wondering if they might
get cancelled. The actual APIs are a joy to use compared to most sites'. They
are well designed, well documented, and mostly consistent across different
products (once you implement something using one Google API, the rest look
pretty familiar if you use them later).

