Google+ API Opens Up

Image via CrunchBase

One of the issues for business users of Google’s social network, Google+, was the lack of support for 3rd party software tools and services to help business (and users) manage their updates.

Within the last couple of days Google has announced that their API for Google+ is being opened up:

More third party tools to help manage your Google+ page

With Google+ Pages (http://goo.gl/zDxfq), millions of businesses and brands are now connecting with their followers in meaningful ways online. From clothing lines to sports teams to summer music tours, 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 (including Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue).

We’re getting a lot of positive feedback from these developers, the businesses they work with, and the Google+ community at large. So over the next several weeks we’ll be opening up these management APIs to hundreds more tool providers.

If you’re a social media management company that’s interested in participating, you can let us know here: http://goo.gl/33ayr. And you can read our original announcement for more information on the APIs themselves: http://goo.gl/X8Zeb.

In the meantime we’ll continue making Google+ a great place to connect with your customers and fans, so please keep the feedback coming!

As mentioned in the announcement some 3rd party tools have been working with Google on this for some time, so if you are an existing Hootsuite user, for example, you can already access Google+ features now. Hootsuite announced last week that they were extending Google+ page support to all their users.

Expect to see more social media applications and services following suit in the next few days and weeks ..

Related articles

• Google+ Page APIs opening up to hundreds of social tool companies (thenextweb.com)
• Google+ API Opens, to Attract More Businesses (mashable.com)
• Google+ Gets More Business-Friendly with New APIs (readwriteweb.com)