A Call for Google+ to Enable Posting via its API

The penny drops at the author's conclusion:<p>"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."<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.

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.<p>However, I would like to see them improve their API by supporting some realtime notifications like PubSubHubBub (for stream items and comments).<p>For purely selfish reasons, I'd like to see them consider allowing write access to comments.<p>If you're interested in adding your vote to allowing write access, join the others here <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=41&#38;colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Component%20Owner%20Summary" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?...</a>

Google wants to build content in Google+ organically.<p>It's the longer &#38; more difficult way and I applaud them for it.<p>If they open up a WRITE API right away, it's going to be exactly like Google Buzz.

I would certainly be using G+ more were the API for posting available.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Alas, I haven't opened G+ in months.

They tried this before. Doesn't anyone remember Google Buzz (and before that FriendFeed)?<p>You end up with streams of auto-posted Twitter junk.<p><i>Maybe</i> 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.

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.<p>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)

+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.

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.<p>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.<p>Automation comes with marketers and spammers, and I want them off my feeds for good to be honest.

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.<p>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.

How exactly would those who really want a post API to G+ use it?<p>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.

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.

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

There does appear to be an unofficial way to do this, though - naturally - it may not last: <a href="https://github.com/mohamedmansour/google-plus-extension-jsapi" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mohamedmansour/google-plus-extension-jsap...</a>

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