Slashdot Mirror
The Google+ API Is Released
An anonymous reader writes "Developers have been waiting since late June for Google to release their API to the public. Well, today is that day. Just a few minute ago Chris Chabot, from Google+ Developer Relations, announced that the Google+ API is now available to the public."
I can't wait to see all the interesting ideas developers have for using this read only API.
They used a chatbot to launch the API?
Now maybe there will be something interesting to use Google+ for...
Google+ didn't bring the gamechange.
It's a ghost town.
You can see Linus Torvalds and the Google Twins there, but hardly anyone else ever posts. And they don't much either. Linus' last post is 9/6, and Sergey's is 8/28, and Larry's is 8/13...
Google needed more than a convention hall. It needed to emcee the convention. Now we have an API, and maybe some people to P it, nobody to A it.
If you're not going to use the word "fuck" in plaintext when you're pseudonymized, then why the fuck do you care if you use your real name or not?
Okay. I just realized the irony. Let's see if anyone else does.
It only has "get" person, "list" activities and "get" activity. You can't post or do anything interesting with it yet. Hopefully they'll open it up more soon.
Okay. I just realized the irony. Let's see if anyone else does.
Took you long enough. :-)
Just because they don't post to you doesn't mean they don't post. I have hundreds of posts, but each one of them is private so my public profile looks empty. I don't know anyone who makes public posts. That's kind of the entire point, which you appear to have missed.
The media hype made it seem more important than it really was. Same happened with Wave.
John Scalzi praised it highly, and I was interested, right up until the fine print swam into view.
IMO, the killer was the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned "Real Name" requirement. I have a google account I use for my Reader, Mail, Calendar, and Docs/Notepad the last three of which are also synchronized on my phone for mobile access. There was and is simply NO way in hell I would risk losing those under google's draconian "Right name or die!" policy, and I rather suspect an awful lot of people just walked away from the threat.
Ironically, the people I know that like it most hate facebook, and consequently aren't used to using social media (myself included).
Keep appealing, and answering the name changer thingy. After a bit of complaining and reporting, they now allow me to use my official pseudonym.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Read only makes it easy to start with. Maybe now tweetdeck and others can get view capabilities. If I can see things on G+ I am likely to go over and post.
The trick with Write is the authentication. Now google has to figure out how to do an authentication scheme it likes (read "they developed to take over the web") for that to happen.
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
I don't know anyone who makes public posts. That's kind of the entire point, which you appear to have missed
There are many I've found who use G+ as they use Twitter, IOW all public posts, like a broadcasting station/soapbox. I find what you say to be generally true of most other users though (including myself). I post daily but you wouldn't know it from my profile.
Reply to That ||
...if they ever got around to fixing google apps so it worked with google+. Instead, all we ( us google apps users ) get are false promises...when we get anything at all.
Can anyone recommend a decent competitor to Google Apps?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The piecemeal "lab" releases that were functional but only 75-85% complete were okay 10 years ago. Anymore, they just give the appearance of not really giving a crap. Overlay that with an Apple-esque approach to usability and terms of use and it just becomes gWorld over and over again.
http://windows.scares.us
The July 28th blog post on betashop.com tells a bit of a different story. ( link to Google cache, the regular site seems to be off atm. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Kro0IOBNR3IJ:betashop.com/page/2+site:betashop.com+betashop+google+plus&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us - It's toward the bottom below the "Make the logo smaller" t-shirt)
It was (at the time) their single highest traffic day and 5% of that traffic came from Google+. That's nearly 9000 visits in one day to a site that is one of the fastest growing e-commerce sites on the planet.
It's not facebook. It's not twitter. But it has certainly contributed enough to fab's bottom line that I have a difficult time believing they are ready to ditch the +1.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Never used a pseudonym on Google+. My issue was never about *me* being able to use one.
So I did the next best thing - I've deleted my Google Profile and have moved on.
Thought I'd never say this, but Bing's search isn't all that bad! (j/k, j/k)
Games on G+ can also reward you for spamming/recruiting your friends. Angry Birds on G+ for example will keep levels locked until you and your friends have a cumulative total of stars to unlock them, so naturally you want to get more people playing. Another game lets you ask for hearts to continue gameplay and equally you can donate hearts. The difference here though is people in your circles will not see all this game stuff unless they are also in their games stream.
Reply to That ||
Google+ sorta forbids that cloning aspect of social gaming. But maybe a nice port of Tetris or FreeCell would get them some dwell time
Guess who else tries to forbid cloning: The Tetris Company.
The first thing that struck me is that quota limits are placed on all applications
"Applications are limited to a courtesy usage quota"
this will suck for anyone who wants to create an application intended for many users.
There are many I've found who use G+ as they use Twitter, IOW all public posts, like a broadcasting station/soapbox.
And there are many who use Google's other soapbox service, especially because unlike Google+, Blogger is open to the public.
Not to mention, the spec for JSON fits on one side of a business card, readably.
Reply to That ||
It's a ghost town to you perhaps but way not for me. I spend more time on Google+ than I have done on FacePlant... I mean FaceBook.
The public wants an alternative to Facebook. Google+, as especially revealed by their "real names" policy is trying to be Facebook. G+ just is not filling any need of those who are unhappy with Facebook, let alone those who are happy.
An API key is how a web service shuts down an application that has malfunctioned. How would you recommend shutting down a malfunctioning application without shutting down other applications running behind the same NAT that are not malfunctioning?
I was hoping that Google+ would be the next best thing, and pop the bubble that is FaceBook. but its not going to happen, most people that would have wanted to move, tried G+, and left sin no one was there and the people who haven't heard about G+ don't care enough to switch. So unless the new API can cook my dinner and wash my clothes and give me a hand job, there is no reason to switch since all the people i care to talk to (and allot of people I don't) are on the FB, ill just stay until it becomes myspace.
Facebook was too fat and happy. I would say more facebook features rolled out in the few months since G+ came out, then in years prior (no randomly re-organizing the interface to annoy your users does not count as a feature). Honestly I think if facebook did like microsoft and went by a hold the course, send out some bad publicity strategy, google would have rapidly overtook them. Googles biggest weakness is every way they inovate the social network side, facebook rapidly copies. Facebooks newer system for groups, now allowing public feeds etc... Everything google does, is quickly copied and mirrored, facebook knows google is not one to play the patent/cheat card, and facebook is going to keep using that to their advantage.
I'm in that group as well. I hate Facebook, and have disliked every other major social networking site. I do like Google+, and even people think it's a Ghost Town, it's because of where they are looking. I see plenty of activity.
erm. I see scads more content on g+ than on facebook --OR-- on slashdot. And it's actual useful interesting stuff.
lol. If by "an awful lot" you mean a handful of self righteous nerds, then I rather suspect you might be right.
I would hardly classify myself as a "self righteous nerd", sir. More of a "I'm damned if I'll go naked on the net where everybody lives next door to both Mother Teresa and Jack the Ripper."
If ad viewers are sending id+preferences to your competitors instead of to you, then social isn't done. There is always pressing need for another, if you're the "another."
Don't view social networking as just another application. If it were just another application, then all these fucking web companies wouldn't be doing it; it would just be something users run instead of central nodes that they upload to; indeed, it would be something they already had (email+IRC+other stuff), because the older tools actually work better for users, but don't work worth a shit for customers.
Google is right in wanting to get into it. So is Facebook and Microsoft and anyone else. It's a good pie to have a piece of.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Maybe you're just not following the right/enough people. I have over 40 posts from the last four hours in my stream. Try following some of these people and I guarantee G+ won't feel like a ghost town:
Tom Merritt Leo Laporte
Cali Lewis Danny Sullivan Jeff Jarvis Louis Gray Tim O'Reilly Jonathan Strickland Natalie Villalobos Eileen Rivera Kiki Sanford Colby Brown Dan Patterson Felicia Day Surprise! Harry McCracken Trey Ratcliff Gina Trapani Veronica Belmont Ron Garan Clever Nickname
IT LAUNCHED TWO FUCKING MONTHS AGO. You know what my facebook wall looked like two months after launch? Nothing, because I hadn't signed up for it yet. Also, the facebook wall didn't go up until 7 months after launch. 10 months it had 1 million users. Two months out, google+ has 10 million users.
Anyway, I see facebook making changes in response to the competition. Not fixing all gripes with it of course, but changes are being made to the... er... "game" as it were.
(By the way, let's not start using the term "gamechange." Sounds too much like some douchebag marketing suit talking.)
It always takes me three tries to read his name right.
You are following the wrong people. I follow people on G+ that post like 10+ times daily. If anything they post TOO much.
And ChromeOS.
"GOOGLE IS GOING TO TAKE ON MICROSOFT WITH ITS OWN OPERATING SYSTEM!!!"
Yes, mainstream media, Google has figured out a way to make a computer that only has a web browser. Look out Microsoft, your days are numbered. You cannot possibly hope to compete with Google's operating system which does not give the ability to write code for it.
Schnapple
Facebook wasn't Google. Everyone was on MySapce. Nobody really knew Facebook existed for a couple of years.
Google+ is Facebook++, and Google wallpapered the world with announcing it was open.
Okay, it was open. It was also void of elemental human interaction, and the forced-looking posting on it isn't creating a critical mass.
The API might help. If they can get some dwellers into some applets. Then people will go there to be, not just to see if it's woke up yet.
Add a game, and it might gamechange the cybersphere. But, better still, promise to keep the SEOtards out, and I'll buy land in it.
Nearly everyone I know that uses Facebook hates using Facebook. So the market was ready for invasion. Hell, people are leaving Facebook in significant numbers and that's with no alternative site to go to!!! Even normal people (you know what I mean) hate Facebook!
Our efforts to promote it didn't work; Google+ has failed.
The reason? Well, there are two:
1. Google+ is a really, really, really, *really* terrible brand-name. Idiots. How does 'Google+' say 'Social Network'? In any way? For the love of God.
2. The interface is complete and utter garbage. I suspect this may have been the biggest problem.
Dear Google, you are very good at some things, but you are hopeless when it comes to interface design. Please hire some people who know what they're doing. Surely you have enough money for that? I hear Apple have a few good designers you could approach.
And now I have to live with Facebook until Microsoft launch something. Good grief.
Can't we just get together on Slashdot and code a Facebook replacement? I estimate it'll take a team of 10 people about 5 hours to surpass Facebook's design... we'll have a head start on Google if we just choose a name that is entirely composed of letters.
RS
But parent has a point. For most APIs a key makes sense, because they're the only way an application can access certain actions, but for a read only API like this where all the data can be scraped anyway, blocking an application doesn't buy you much.
Dilbert RSS feed
I agree :(
I have only 155 people in my circles but it's already too much. There are too many of them that are simply using it as FB. For example: if I want to post something funny, or simply not technology related, I have a list of people called "Pub" with people inside that I know that don't mind reading all kind of stuff. When I post something technology related, I post it to some circle where I put people I know are following that technology.
However, if we don't all follow similar rules, if people simply post to either to public or all circles, trying to filter by your circles is useless as you simply get all sort of garbage everywhere :) pretty much like in FB where most people didn't even know about lists.
I hoped that with Goggle+ people would start fresh and start using circles in a proper way, also because it seems there are more geeks than in FB. I stopped hoping.
Same here. I stopped sending out invites, and gave up using G+. With the real names policy only a portion of the people I know will be prepared to switch, not making it worth my while to badger and cajole people into switching from Facebook. G+ is pretty much dead in the water. But people still hate Facebook so there is still room for a new competitor!
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
When I first heard about this, I was excited. I can post to Twitter and Facebook (if I used the latter) using Seesmic Desktop, but can't post to Google+ unless I go to their website. This is because Seesmic (and other 3rd party clients) didn't have an API to access the site. Unfortunately, when I looked at the API, it's read-only. So Seesmic could show you comments on your stream, but to post an update or comment, you'd still have to go to their site. Perhaps the read-and-write API will come soon, but until it is read-and-write it'll only be half of an API to me.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
but for a read only API like this where all the data can be scraped anyway
Spider to the point where an API key would break, and Google will start serving CAPTCHAs.
I wish Diaspora* would change their fucking name so it'd be more appealing to the masses.
Also wishing I had donated my $100 to Michael Chisari and The Appleseed Project over Diaspora* but I didn't know about Appleseed until after I had donated to Diaspora. ::sigh::
Parent just said using his real name wasn't the issue. Did you just read "deleted my Google Profile" and immediately jump into Google fanboi mode?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Wasn't ChromeOS Linux based? If so, how did they prevent people from writing code for it?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Look, you can't really compare the timelines between Facebook and Google+. Facebook has been around for almost a decade, and when it came out it didn't have many competitors, the whole social networking concept was new and experimental. Now Facebook is the established brand in social networking - pretty much invented the market - and it's going to be incredibly difficult for Google to topple it, even if the numbers show it to be oh so much more successful in the short term than Facebook was when it started.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
If Google want to build a better social networking site, maybe they should spend less on marketing, throw together lots of alternative sites, and see what sticks on the wall (pun intended). It's not like they can't afford it.
And who the hell are those? I don't want to follow some random people, I want to follow people I know and my friends. They aren't there, or if some are, they aren't posting anything there but on Facebook. This makes Google+ ghost town and useless to me and many other people.
No, all of that data can't be scraped. Via API you get direct access to everything the user or his/her friends have posted on the wall, even items that are not for public viewing or are only for certain circle. You can't scrape that information.
ah balls wrong story. lol
I don't want to mix my real life info like my name, and professional experience, with stuff I would not want a future employer to see. Hence the need to compartmentalize the data under different account names. Since Google+ does not allow that, I'm not interested in using it much.
No competitors? Myspace was what we were using before facebook. And while facebook has been established for a while, it didn't perfect it by any stretch. There's plenty of improving to do, the different classes of associations / circles was a big one. In any event, it's too early to be saying google plus is a failed experiment.
Your comparison is wrong. No, I don't think we're so dumb that we would be using candles rather than lightbulbs. And according to the above, it's dead, they didn't hype it ENOUGH. I have yet to see a billboard or commercial for google plus, there was a marketing blitz?
The name doesn't matter as long as it's impossible to sign up for the service. I requested an invite months ago, but still don't have an account.
You know, for me it's the other way around, I can hardly keep up with my friends posting on G+, while almost everybody (including myself) has largely abandoned Facebook.
And you know something else? The plural of anecdote isn't data. Our experiences differ a lot, still the truth will be somewhere in between.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
I wish Diaspora* would change their fucking name so it'd be more appealing to the masses.
What? The name is the coolest part of it! If only the rest of it was anywhere near as good, it might amount to something.
I'm holding out this idealogical hope that when Google+ comes out of beta they'll announce that, "oh, by the way, it's federated, and here's Lars on his Yahoo+ account, and this is me adding him as a friend on my Google+"
Boom
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Send me your Email. I've got invites.
gellenburg (gmail).
Make a separate account for Google+ only?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Jesus, do you just whine all day about nothing?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Dyson never built anything at all in a vacuum. Fiction doesn't count, sorry. This is the real world were in now, try to keep up.
NASA never built anything great in a vacuum, though they have assembled a space station or two, which were built on Earth.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
At this point, I'm about to give up and reactivate my Facebook account. I just don't think Google is agile enough to run an evolving social networking site.
"GOOGLE IS GOING TO TAKE ON MICROSOFT WITH ITS OWN OPERATING SYSTEM!!!"
And they did.
And it was a stupid fucking idea and it failed faster than Windows Phone 7.
But they did try.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How blissful it must be to be so ignorant that you think the policy that effects one part of the company doesn't effect the rest of the company.
All Google online services have a real name policy moron, they just haven't bothered to really enforce it on a large scale ... but if you just search slashdot you'll find at least one story of someone who lost Android apps for that very reason.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Then why are you trying to combine them with one account?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
That's cool, but until they fix their stupid "real names only" policy, I'm not touching Google+
The Digital Sorceress
How does
it didn't have many competitors
translate to
No competitors?
Yes, MySpace was a competitor but it was a much smaller market back then and Facebook did it better, so there wasn't too big of a barrier to switching. Now, if people switch completely, they have to take the hundreds of photos they've posted, and lose years of status updates, and wait for all their hundreds of friends to switch over as well - it's a big task just like reformatting your harddrive which is something that most people are also loathe to do even when it would end up being better for them.
Circles is a great concept, one that Facebook is already implementing in some fashion, and even if it's not better than Google's it's Good Enough For Now. Yes, it is too early to be saying G+ is a failed experiment and I didn't say that. I just said you can't compare the environment that Facebook thrived in back then to the environment that Google is facing today. It's a very different landscape and tossing out numbers of early adopters isn't a show of Google's success. I'm also an early adopter, and I still use G+ with Facebook, but I use Facebook a lot more.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
This is what happened to my post, shortly after linking it on Facebook... The link and preview are completely gone.
http://i.imgur.com/6k8tE.png
WTF, Facebook? U scared?
no need to wait:
https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supported-pods
here, have invites, I don't need 'em:
https://plus.google.com/i/upkIlH-ikcw:lVUWSKUAc30
if you use your account for anything but slagging off google+ and facebook I'll have a sad though :/
Unsure why this is also marked down this week, what's going on?
I don't want to have to make a new account, I simply want some of the facebook privacy features (amazingly) which google isn't offering.
I DON'T want to be found by my email address if I so choose.
I DO want to sign in with my normal google account.
I DON'T want to display my real name to some people.
I DON'T want to display my "internet alias's" to others
I DO want to lock my profile down to unknowns (or parts of it)
To replace / add to twitter, I DO want to make some parts public, under perhaps my alias assigned to the account?
I DON'T want my youtube / other google services displaying my real name and or linking back to my G+ account
They have potential to beat twitter and facebook here and I'm thinking they are squandering it.