It’s been noticed that for last few weeks launches in social media industry are on its peak including Facebook – “Smart friend List” and “Subscribe Button”, Twitter – “Five languages tweet”, and Google+ – Its First “API” access to users. Interestingly, none of them have had it enough till now.
Google+ is again in news with the launch of some new features that concludes – Hangout API and Open Account Access to users. Company reveals that going further new users can easily get access to Google+ account and can use Hangout on mobiles and for presentation.
Google launched it social networking site few months earlier to compete with Facebook and Twitter and – up to some extent – proves to be a threat for Facebook. After the launch of Google+ Facebook has made dynamic change in its networking site by including “subscribe button” and “new smart friend list “- both are virtually copied from Google+ and Twitter.
When Google launched Google+ in June this year, it got surrounded by many speculations. However, Google+ eradicates the all such rumors by achieving 10 million milestones in just 16 days, which Twitter achieved in 780 days and Facebook even longer 852 days. At present around 20 million users are associated with Google+ and the figure is appreciating with every passing day.
However, the new Hangout API (application programming interface) will be available as a “Developer Preview”. That means it’s still under the test version and it may take some time to become stable.
New Hangout API will allow developers to create new applications and to build their own application inside. Developers can build real – time applications that use hangouts, similar to You Tube which was built by Google.
Google has also announced several new built-in features which have been added in Google+ Hangout like screen sharing, Google documents editing and sketching. These new features will attract developers to create more attractive applications that will lead to more creative use of the API.
Google+ has launched this API in order to get feedback from the developers for its further improvement. Company warns that Hangout API functionality will change in weeks and month ahead.
“In the three months since we launched face-to-face-to-face communication in Google+ Hangouts, I’ve been impressed by the many ways people use them. We’ve seen Hangouts for game shows, fantasy football drafts, guitar lessons and even hangouts for writers to break their solitary confinement… Real-time applications are more engaging, fun and interactive but were hard for developers to deliver. Until now” says Richard Dunn – Hangout Technical Lead.
Google has provided some sample codes and three sample applications in the documentation for the ease of users and developers.
In future, it would be interesting to see how Hangout API will increase the credibility and users of Google+ in social media market.
