Introducing the Google+ Hangouts API
By Richard Dunn, Technical
Lead, Google+ platform for HangoutsCross-posted
from the Google+
Platform BlogIn the three months since we
launched face-to-face-to-face communication in Google+ Hangouts, I’ve been impressed by the
many ways people use them. We’ve seen Hangouts for
game
shows,
fantasy
football drafts,
guitar
lessons and even
hangouts for
writers to break their solitary confinement. That’s just the beginning. Real-time
applications are more engaging, fun, and interactive, but were hard for developers to deliver.
Until now.
Today we’re launching the Developer Preview of the
Hangouts API, another small piece
of the Google+ platform. It enables you to add your own experiences to Hangouts and instantly
build real-time applications, just like our first application, the built-in YouTube
player.
The integration model is simple -- you build a web app,
register it with us, and specify who on your team can load it into their Hangout. Your app
behaves like a normal web app, plus it can take part in the real-time conversation with new
APIs like synchronization. Now you can create a "shared state" among all instances of your app
so that all of your users can be instantly notified of changes made by anyone else. (This is
how the YouTube player keeps videos in sync.) And we’ve added our first few multimedia APIs so
you can, for example, mute the audio and video feeds of Hangout participants.
When you’re ready to start hacking, we’re ready for you -- read the
documentation,
sign up, and start coding. We’re
anxious to get your
feedback, since this is a very
early version of the API. We’ll be making improvements and moving towards full production
based on what we learn together. And we’ll be releasing new updates on a regular basis, so
stay tuned!
Follow the conversation on
Google+.
Richard Dunn is Technical
Lead, Google+ platform for HangoutsPosted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
