
A Call for Google+ to Enable Posting via its API - mjfern
http://blog.intigi.com/a-call-for-google-to-enable-posting-via-its-api/
======
Lewisham
The penny drops at the author's conclusion:

"By updating its API to support posting, users of clients and plugins would
start to actively publish to Google+. This would quickly increase the amount
and quality of content available on this platform and in turn attract users
and engagement."

No, it wouldn't. It would turn into Facebook, which right now is a stream of
unreleated, unuseful junk. Why do I care if my friends on the other side of
the state check into a bar? I don't. It's pointless, useless information.

What Facebook has built is a data dumping ground, songs listened to, bars
checked into, and the always obnoxious comment from someone you know to
someone you don't.

What G+ has tried to do, at least with games, is contextualize the
notifications. If I'm playing a game, then I see the game notifications. They
never appear in the main stream. I like this. I really hate the Spotify track
notifications in Facebook, they're awful. I'm perfectly fine with seeing them
in Spotify, because I've already made a decision to listen to music.

Facebook opened up the flood gates, and everyone is drowning. Google is taking
the opposite approach, but everyone is thirsty. It seems a lot easier for
Google to move towards more useful notifications than for Facebook to back
away from them.

~~~
mjfern
I'm the author of the post. While I agree there is a risk of a flood of
content, I have two counterpoints.

First, there are countermeasures. As a user on Google+ I'd quickly remove
someone from my circles if they over-shared low quality content. Furthermore,
Google+ can implement algorithms that affect the prominence of the content
based on various quality factors. There's evidence that Facebook has such
algorithms in place (1).

Second, the headwinds to gain share in a market with strong network effects
outweighs the risk of a flood of content. Users already have a preference to
use Facebook and Twitter given their network value (2). Any friction in
sharing via Google+ just further encourages users to invest the bulk of their
time and resources on these other platforms.

(1)
[http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32124/Facebook-C...](http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32124/Facebook-
Content-Published-Via-Third-Party-Tools-Suffers-67-Fewer-Likes-New-Data.aspx)

(2) <http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/28/google-plus-ghost-town/>

~~~
nl
_Second, the headwinds to gain share in a market with strong network effects
outweighs the risk of a flood of content._

The evidence indicates otherwise. Both Google Buzz & FriendFeed failed in part
because of lack of engaged users. That in turn was caused by the floods of
autoposted crap.

There is _no_ network effect benefit from content being posted from non-
engaged users. Rather, it is the opposite: in the case of both Buzz &
FriendFeed people would use it as an interface for reading Twitter (say) and
the would move over to Twitter to converse. The crossposted content acted as a
way to encourage people to leave the platform.

 _Engagement_ is king on social networks. Anything that reduces engagement
should be discouraged.

------
mmastrac
I've heard from people at Google that the reason they don't want to open up
posting over the API is because they don't want people's streams filled with
robot cross-posts from Twitter, Facebook and zillions of other services. I
happen to agree with this point of view.

~~~
mindcrime
Sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me. I have a hard time
seeing how one can justify avoiding providing something that users of a
service are desperately eager for, and which would undoubtedly help grow the
ecosystem around said service, all because of one potential negative
consequence. And especially one that, at the end of the day, people can
simulate anyway by just posting the same content (by hand) to G+, Facebook,
Twitter, etc.

~~~
mmastrac
Here's an example of why they don't want to turn it on (this is one of the
examples they use internally).

<https://plus.google.com/107158560758466172135/posts>

Charlie Kindel uses a backdoor to paste his tweets to G+ and adds very little
to the community. There is no interaction on his posts - it's just added
noise.

~~~
cek
I came across the service that cross-posts to G+ by accident. The funny thing
is I can't even remember its name right now!

I couldn't turn it off if I wanted to (and I don't; I have no desire to
"engage" on G+, but the narcissist in me likes knowing as many people are
seeing my posts as possible).

I turned it on as an experiment to see how the people who have "circled me" on
G+ would react.

The reaction has been mixed. On one hand VicG used it as an example of what
not to do. A few others have made snide comments.

On the other hand, I've picked up hundreds of new circlers and gotten some
interesting (to me) comments on some of my posts/tweets.

~~~
nl
_I have no desire to "engage" on G+, but the narcissist in me likes knowing as
many people are seeing my posts as possible_

And there is a best argument against adding a write API to Google+

------
ed209
I think Google+ are doing the right thing by not allowing write access yet.
Facebook has taught us that. The main reason I've seen people wanting write
access is so the can "automatically post to G+ when they post to twitter or
facebook" - um, no thanks.

However, I would like to see them improve their API by supporting some
realtime notifications like PubSubHubBub (for stream items and comments).

For purely selfish reasons, I'd like to see them consider allowing write
access to comments.

If you're interested in adding your vote to allowing write access, join the
others here [http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-
platform/issues/detail?...](http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-
platform/issues/detail?id=41&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Component%20Owner%20Summary)

------
dannyr
Google wants to build content in Google+ organically.

It's the longer & more difficult way and I applaud them for it.

If they open up a WRITE API right away, it's going to be exactly like Google
Buzz.

------
obituary_latte
I would certainly be using G+ more were the API for posting available.

I had an idea very early on in G+'s life that it'd work great as a sort of
bookmarking tool (nb: for myself, not necessarily others). I wanted to create
an extension that I could use to "post" articles to circles I created (e.g.
tech, or food or whatever) when I came across an interesting article.

I've tried other bookmarking services in the past, but never had the
discipline to keep going (or I forgot). I figured because I use gmail
frequently, and am always logged in, it would work well as a place I could
aggregate things I wanted to read, but didn't have time to read at the time.
It would also have the added benefit of being a list, or collection of things
I found interesting/relevant that I could then share with other people. Could
even have communal bookmarking with my closest friends.

Alas, I haven't opened G+ in months.

~~~
Lewisham
You can do this with +1 -> Share.

For sites that don't implement a +1 button, there are browser extensions (at
least for Chrome) that will do it for you.

~~~
obituary_latte
Thanks.

Can you designate a circle to send to?

~~~
backspace
Yes.

------
nl
They tried this before. Doesn't anyone remember Google Buzz (and before that
FriendFeed)?

You end up with streams of auto-posted Twitter junk.

 _Maybe_ at some point in the future they will develop algorithms that filter
out this stuff to the point where it is useful. At the moment I prefer it the
way it is.

------
jack-r-abbit
I use Tweetdeck (on my phone) and Rockmelt (on desktop) to post to Facebook
and Twitter. I don't always post to both at the same time but when I want
to... it is easy. I just need to select where it goes before I send it. I
would very much LOVE to include G+ in this scenario but I cannot. In the
beginning I was really trying to give G+ the shot it deserved. I was making
the extra effort to make common posts in my G+ app, too. I even went a couple
days where I only posted stuff to G+. But it was too early. Now I check in on
my G+ stream maybe once a week to catch up with stuff from a few friends that
have made the full jump and I rarely post anything. I would really like an app
that can post via an API. I would certainly use G+ more.

On a side note, I kind of like what G+ was thinking with the Circles concept
as a way of filtering but I don't really like it in practice... or maybe it
was just how my friends were using it. Most of the people I know on G+ created
Circles and used them like you might use tags in a blog post. A post from a
Mac person about a cool photo app or feature they found in the latest iOS
might be visible only to people in their "Mac-heads", "Photog" and "iOS"
circles. I'm not a Photog or a Mac/iOS person but still might be interested in
content of that nature. I can understand having Circles like "Coworkers" and
"Bible Study Group" where there might be discussions that should be kept
private. But using Circles like tagging seems excessively exclusionary when it
is not done for privacy reason. While I appreciate the sentiment of people not
wanting to bore me with stuff I may not be interested in, I think it made the
"share ALL the things" pendulum swing too far the other way. (just my opinion)

~~~
camikazegreen
I think that this is the biggest challenge that G+ needs to solve, at least
for the way that I use the service. I want to share things publicly without
spamming my friends with things they would not be interested in. What I want
to be able to do is share something publicly that my Hackers circle or my Rock
Climbing circle would appreciate without spamming the other.

Similarly, there are plenty of people that I want to follow because of their
insight in one area, but I don't want to see their lolcats.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I think the difference is like this:

Circles: I don't _think_ you want to see my lolcats so I'll just deny you
access to see them.

Filters: I don't want to see your lolcats so I'll just hide them from my
stream.

As a consumer of _my_ stream, I would like to have as much control over it as
I can. Circles gives me almost no control over what I see. Since we don't know
what Circles we've been put in and we don't see content for Circles we're not
in, we really have no idea what we've missed.

------
sytelus
+1. The fear that APIs would increase noise can easily mitigated by providing
filter for source application (just like FB allows to block posting from
apps). Regardless of the noise issue, the fact is that most people do not
their presence exclusively on G+ and no one likes to copy-paste their posts
across multiple social networks. G+ is losing out on lots of valuable data by
worrying about noise that otherwise can easily filtered out algorithmically.

------
Monotoko
Social Automation? Is it just me or do the two just not go together? I like
the fact that when I look at my G+ account, I only see what others want to
share, took the time to share.

It's a nice break from FB and Twitter...if I was running g+ I wouldn't enable
write access at all, make a niche on the fact that everything is organic.

Automation comes with marketers and spammers, and I want them off my feeds for
good to be honest.

~~~
sad_panda
+1. I am frustrated when I see discussions and demands made in the media that
are fomented by SEO and marketers. They are strip miners of communities, who
happily exploit loopholes for profit until no trust remains in the system.

------
sriramk
All social platforms need time to find their own voice/posting behavior. Think
of how Instagram evolved it's own etiquette instead of being yet another place
to dump your photos.

I'm with Google here. Allowing people to use the API and cross-post might get
them short term wins but will cause long term harm; they will be commoditizing
themselves and worse, not giving themselves the chance to build an organic
community.

------
RossM
How exactly would those who really want a post API to G+ use it?

The uses that come to mind are the convenience of posting from a multi-network
client (e.g. TweetDeck), cross-posting from other networks and for those
"RSS/new blog post to network" type scripts. In my opinion, the latter two are
the robotic posts that can bog down G+ and the third isn't too far from that.

------
johngunderman
I would disagree with this article. Most posts through third-party
applications will have a motivation to reach the largest possible audience.
This will lead to an excessive amount of public posts. Not only will this
defeat the purpose of "circles", it will also flood G+ search with noise. This
will destroy much of the usefulness of the network.

------
sunsu
I would settle for at least a comments plugin! That's really the only big
problem with Plusify (<https://github.com/lylepratt/Plusify>), in order to
comment on a post, you have to go to Google+.

------
stevejalim
There does appear to be an unofficial way to do this, though - naturally - it
may not last: [https://github.com/mohamedmansour/google-plus-extension-
jsap...](https://github.com/mohamedmansour/google-plus-extension-jsapi)

------
jonaphin
Google+ will enable posting via its API. You can bet your 2 cents on it.

