Twitter still has an API though your client cannot become "popular" and Google+ has an API for business use as well as an unofficial API. It wouldn't surprise m

Twitter still has an API though your client cannot become "popular" and Google+ has an API for business use as well as an unofficial API. It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook chat ends up with an "unofficial API" too. It's too bad platforms for chat have never been as open or standardized as email, but maybe WebRTC or some other standard way of implementing plugin-less clients will assist us in future. For now, shipping proprietary JSON to the browser is too easy to pass up, and obscurity has been a great way to prevent lazy spammers. ;-)