Re:Google+ API Launch Still Months Away
by AndrewDucker on Tuesday September 06, 2011 @12:10PM
(#2966057)
I agree.
Google+ got a lot of momentum, and then it all slowed to a crawl. And once the real names stuff broke, and got it a bunch of bad press, the traffic seemed to slow to a crawl over there.
I worry that they're going to leave it too late - that by the time they have a product worth having they'll have lost their customer base.
They certainly seem to have thrown away a lot of their advantage from the brilliantly-executed launch. If they had followed up quickly, and avoided the real names rathole, they were on track for a huge success. Now it'll be a much tougher path. I still think it'll be at least semi-successful, but it doesn't seem as likely to take significant market share away from Facebook or Twitter any time soon.
The great thing about G+ is it seems to be popular with a few really interesting people I like to follow who post more to G+ than they did on Twitter. However the lack of an API is preventing wider use and adoption. Right now there is no convenient way to say integrate your own blog and while I actually use the twitter website a lot more now, 3rd party tools are still the most popular way for people to organize their multiple social networks together..
Of course I realize API integration has it's dark side too, mostly in the form of spammers, but it's a small price to pay for having a more active community.