7 ms·

A Call for Google+ to Enable Posting via its API

59 points by mjfern 15y ago

mmastrac 15y ago
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.
- danmaz74 15y ago
  But what is worse: A stream full of reposts, or an empty stream? It's each user's resonsibility to choose what to post (or repost) or not... Google could just give lower priority in the "filter" to reposted content.
  - jamesgeck0 15y ago
    Google Buzz had a lot of import sources available at launch. There was so much noise from automated cross posting that I didn't even know that several of my friends were actively using the service until months later. In contrast, Google+ is almost completely signal for me right now.
    - wyclif 15y ago
      Yes, I was waiting for someone to bring up Buzz. I was also a first-day user of Buzz, and guess what? They allowed third-party import, and very quickly out-of-context Twitter updates overwhelmed my stream. Then there was a backlash, and the smarter people turned them off rather quickly. But the vast majority of people kept on using it. I think Google knows exactly what they are doing here.
  - nooneelse 14y ago
    Not all the G+ streams are empty, so that dilemma only really has one horn. Bot-posting would raise the noise floor so as to swamp the current (small) signal. Better to attempt growing the signal itself before adding in a bunch of noise that the users will have to sort through. Now, if one could separate off each user from their bots... that would be neat. Maybe default to only circling a user, but show that they have some bots which one can also subscribe to, if one wants.
- Apreche 15y ago
  I have a page for my podcast. I want my podcast's web-site to automatically post about new episodes to G+ the same way it does for Twitter and Facebook. If people don't want it, they can just unsub.
  - barredo 15y ago
    Maybe they should allow api-posting to pages, and not to users.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  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.
  - backspace 15y ago
    Key words: "by hand" -- posting spam by hand doesn't scale. That's what it's preventing.
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    I have a hard time seeing how one can justify avoiding providing something that users of a service are desperately eager for, ... How do people know what g+ users are "desperately eager for"? Have there been studies? Polls?
    - tobyjsullivan 15y ago
      I'll bet Google's done the studies and polls. And I'll bet they are seriously considering the response: "We don't want API-driven auto-junk filling our streams!"
      - mindcrime 15y ago
        "We don't want API-driven auto-junk filling our streams!" Nobody does, but - again - we're talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Not everything posted via API is "junk."
        jamesbritt 14y ago
        Not everything posted via API is "junk." True, but enough of it is to make it a problem. What could Google do to trap the noise but allow the signal? Rate limiting? Pattern matching against Twitter posts?
- passionfruit 15y ago
  This is exactly what happened to Google Buzz.
- hugorodgerbrown 14y ago
  They have already allowed certain product vendors access to the write API - more details here - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-help-manage-your.html http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-h...
stevejalim 15y ago
There does appear to be an unofficial way to do this, though - naturally - it may not last: https://github.com/mohamedmansour/google-plus-extension-jsapi https://github.com/mohamedmansour/google-plus-extension-jsap...
jonaphin 15y ago
Google+ will enable posting via its API. You can bet your 2 cents on it.
obituary_latte 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Thanks. Can you designate a circle to send to?
    - backspace 15y ago
      Yes.
Lewisham 15y ago
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.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  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. It's pointless and useless to you; you can hardly claim that it's pointless and useless to everyone. And this is exactly why I'll reiterate what I've said over and over again before... the solution is to give people better filters. You can't control what other people publish and trying to do so is pointless... but giving people filters to decide what to include/exclude in their streams it totally reasonable, and it's what Facebook, G+, and all the other "social" sites need to get better at.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - methodin 15y ago
    Filters are not the panacea for this problem. I could filter by application, but that does not mean all input from an application are meaningless. The automated stuff is what everyone wants to filter, but there are apps where that could be a mix e.g. I want to explicitly share a song from Spotify vs. having them automatically do it. The only way this would work is to have a dedicated section for posts from APIs, but that really defeats the purpose for using the API in the first place.
johngunderman 15y ago
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.
ed209 15y ago
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?id=41&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Component%20Owner%20Summary http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?...
jack-r-abbit 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
nl 15y ago
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.
dannyr 15y ago
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.
RossM 15y ago
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.
sriramk 15y ago
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.
Monotoko 15y ago
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 15y ago
  +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.
sunsu 15y ago
I would settle for at least a comments plugin! That's really the only big problem with Plusify (https://github.com/lylepratt/Plusify https://github.com/lylepratt/Plusify), in order to comment on a post, you have to go to Google+.
sytelus 15y ago
+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.

59 points by mjfern 15y ago

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.

danmaz74 15y ago
But what is worse: A stream full of reposts, or an empty stream? It's each user's resonsibility to choose what to post (or repost) or not... Google could just give lower priority in the "filter" to reposted content.
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  Google Buzz had a lot of import sources available at launch. There was so much noise from automated cross posting that I didn't even know that several of my friends were actively using the service until months later. In contrast, Google+ is almost completely signal for me right now.
  - wyclif 15y ago
    Yes, I was waiting for someone to bring up Buzz. I was also a first-day user of Buzz, and guess what? They allowed third-party import, and very quickly out-of-context Twitter updates overwhelmed my stream. Then there was a backlash, and the smarter people turned them off rather quickly. But the vast majority of people kept on using it. I think Google knows exactly what they are doing here.
- nooneelse 14y ago
  Not all the G+ streams are empty, so that dilemma only really has one horn. Bot-posting would raise the noise floor so as to swamp the current (small) signal. Better to attempt growing the signal itself before adding in a bunch of noise that the users will have to sort through. Now, if one could separate off each user from their bots... that would be neat. Maybe default to only circling a user, but show that they have some bots which one can also subscribe to, if one wants.
Apreche 15y ago
I have a page for my podcast. I want my podcast's web-site to automatically post about new episodes to G+ the same way it does for Twitter and Facebook. If people don't want it, they can just unsub.
- barredo 15y ago
  Maybe they should allow api-posting to pages, and not to users.
mindcrime 15y ago
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.
- backspace 15y ago
  Key words: "by hand" -- posting spam by hand doesn't scale. That's what it's preventing.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  I have a hard time seeing how one can justify avoiding providing something that users of a service are desperately eager for, ... How do people know what g+ users are "desperately eager for"? Have there been studies? Polls?
  - tobyjsullivan 15y ago
    I'll bet Google's done the studies and polls. And I'll bet they are seriously considering the response: "We don't want API-driven auto-junk filling our streams!"
    - mindcrime 15y ago
      "We don't want API-driven auto-junk filling our streams!" Nobody does, but - again - we're talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Not everything posted via API is "junk."
      - jamesbritt 14y ago
        Not everything posted via API is "junk." True, but enough of it is to make it a problem. What could Google do to trap the noise but allow the signal? Rate limiting? Pattern matching against Twitter posts?
passionfruit 15y ago
This is exactly what happened to Google Buzz.
hugorodgerbrown 14y ago
They have already allowed certain product vendors access to the write API - more details here - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-help-manage-your.html http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-h...

stevejalim 15y ago

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

jonaphin 15y ago

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

obituary_latte 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Thanks. Can you designate a circle to send to?
  - backspace 15y ago
    Yes.

Lewisham 15y ago

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.

mindcrime 15y ago
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. It's pointless and useless to you; you can hardly claim that it's pointless and useless to everyone. And this is exactly why I'll reiterate what I've said over and over again before... the solution is to give people better filters. You can't control what other people publish and trying to do so is pointless... but giving people filters to decide what to include/exclude in their streams it totally reasonable, and it's what Facebook, G+, and all the other "social" sites need to get better at.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- methodin 15y ago
  Filters are not the panacea for this problem. I could filter by application, but that does not mean all input from an application are meaningless. The automated stuff is what everyone wants to filter, but there are apps where that could be a mix e.g. I want to explicitly share a song from Spotify vs. having them automatically do it. The only way this would work is to have a dedicated section for posts from APIs, but that really defeats the purpose for using the API in the first place.

johngunderman 15y ago

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.

ed209 15y ago

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?id=41&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Component%20Owner%20Summary http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?...

jack-r-abbit 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.

nl 15y ago

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.

dannyr 15y ago

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.

RossM 15y ago

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.

sriramk 15y ago

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.

Monotoko 15y ago

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 15y ago
+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.

sunsu 15y ago

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

sytelus 15y ago

+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.