Why You (should) Care about Google+ APIs
Have you updated your circles lately? Since its official launch in June last year, Google has busy releasing regular updates to its beloved social networking platform. Even if you are not an active user, it’s hard to miss some of the buzz around its latest and greatest features. (You might recall this commercial).
API-a-palooza
After launching, Google+ was quick to open up a handful of APIs to a small number of platform partners (Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hear Say Social, HootSuite, Involver and Vitrue). While limited in functionality, it at least gave marketers an early opportunity to begin publishing content and collective bits and pieces of performance data. To the lament of many developers, more than a year has gone by since any major updates. Until last Wednesday, that is.
Eduardo Thuler, a Google+ Product Manager, announced in a G+ post that Google will expand its third-party API partners (beyond the initial six) to include “hundreds more over the next few weeks”. Rather than regurgitate his post, below are a few key excerpts. You can read the full entry here.
“Pages are inspiring conversations around the topics people care about, and we want to enable more of these connections, more often.
In particular, many brands use third party tools to manage their social media presence across the web. So in recent months we’ve been been previewing a new set of Google+ management APIs with some of these companies (same partners as listed above).”
So, why should marketers care? The release of these APIs could lead to more businesses joining Google+, and jumpstart third party innovations on its platform. The obvious comparison many will make is to Facebook.
“We think the Facebook API has been a real success for Facebook, so I imagine it would do the same for Google.”
- Ben Tregoe, Nanigans, a Facebook API partner (source: Mashable)
If you want early access for your brand or company, sign up here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlepluspagethirdpartytoolsform/
Do you think the release of new APIs will make a profound impact on the growth of Google+? Tell us in the comments!
Paul Matson is a Social Media Strategist at Razorfish, based in Chicago. When he’s not strategizing the information highway, you can find him working hard to create the world’s next great cat meme. Tweet him at @PaulMatson.
