Flipboard becomes prominent
Google+ partner
Google
isn't ready to open up a Google+ interface to just anybody yet, but it has done
so with one important partner, flipboard.
An application programming interface
(API) lets third-party software tap into a service, and opening the Google+ API
will let people use Flipboard to read and publish Google+ posts and to comment
on those posts.
Bradley
Horowitz, the Google vice president of product management in charge of Google+,
announced the move at the LeWeb conference in London. He showed off a prototype
of the Google+-connected Flipboard software on an apple, but didn't say when it
would arrive or when Google would open the Google+ API to other developers.
When might Google open it more broadly?
Horowitz indicated that people should be patient: it'll happen "when we
can do it in a way that we know is good for users," for example so people's
Google+ streams don't get polluted with junk posts.
The quick demo showed Flipboard's
typical interface, with its design of virtual pages that people can flip from
one subject to another. One page showed various photos from a particular user,
another textual comments, and a third a combination of some text with a large
photos. He also showed a basic interface for posting a comment to Google+.
One
interesting aspect of the demo is that Google, although it's released
phone-centric apps for Google+, hasn't done so with iPads yet. The
Google+-enabled Flipboard software even in its prototype state looked more
polished than the iphone version scaled up to double-size resolution.
