The Google+ Ecosystem is Slowly Expanding - Even Without an API

Google+ doesn’t currently offer an API, but that isn’t stopping developers from trying to offer Google+-related  apps and services. Given how fast Google’s new social network is growing, it doesn’t come as a surprise that developers are working hard to get a head start in developing services for it, even without Google’s support.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen an explosion of activity around offering Google+ services. These range from basic services that let you customize your profile picture to basic stats services and more complex web apps that crawl public Google profiles, index them and make them searchable. Another useful new service lets you turn your public Google+ into RSS feeds to pull them into any kind of widget or service that can read these feeds. There are also plenty of Chrome plugins that add new functionality to Google+.

Others, like notifications service Boxcar, are recommending workarounds that give their users some of the functionality of an API-enabled service by using Google’s email notifications for Google+ as a gateway to pushing information to other services..

When Will Google Open the API Floodgates?

Now, it’s only a matter of time before Google launches an official API that will give developers the ability to create desktop and mobile clients, launch new monitoring services and replicate virtually all the other kinds of apps we’ve come to know and love in the Twitter ecosystem. Judging from the services that are available already, there is clearly some pent-up demand among developers there – especially given that Twitter hasn’t exactly treated its developers very well lately.