CheezeDMG Blog

Recently there has been mention of Google’s new social graph API (an API is n interface for letting a program communicate with another program over the web), the main question of course is what is it?

Well the best explanation we have so far, is

“it’s an automated tool that pulls all your social data into one stream”

Currently a user could have many friends on several platforms, using an application powered by this API that user could both search for and receive updates/information on those friends regardless of chosen platform.

The API works like a search, it uses the public URLs of a user (blog, LiveJournal, Twitter account etc) and the public connections between users, the links on each others blogs or homepages to locate and index friends of that user.

By checking all of the connections the API can tell if the friend is genuine and the application can act accordingly. Developers can use this to create apps that can keep friends in touch of each other regardless of their chosen platform. Similar tools, that work to harness all your social data into one stream have been around for a while, sites like Pownce and Jaiku (now a Google company) have been streaming this knowledge for some time by pulling in your RSS feeds from social sites.

A good example of this API in action is Plaxo Pulse, the first to use this API it shows users updates of other friends on multiple platforms – effectively the user can have a friend RSS feed that shows updates on blog entries, media uploads (photos, videos etc) – continuously updated and all automatic.

So this is cool, and part of Google’s continued aim to make sense of the web. Now with their social API, they are now trying to make sense of the social web and of human connections - but where will it end?

You can see the API pages here.

You may have seen a lot of talk about Google launching Open Social - so what is it? Well in a nutshell it is an API standard that other companies can use to open up their site and connect with other sites and apps. For people or companies looking to create an app to go onto Facebook, they need to use the Facebook coding. If they also wished to do this on MySpace, and Bebo and Skype, then that would be 4 x the work assuming each site has different coding requirements.

What Google’s Open Social does is offer a centralised code structure which site owners can use quickly to allow much greater uptake of app development and therefore integration.