Google Plus is a service to share links, photos and other content. The Google Plus API allows developers to access publicly-available Google Plus content, including user information and publicly shared items.
The
Facebook API is a platform for building applications that are available to the members of the social network of Facebook. The API allows applications to use the social connections and profile information to make applications more involving, and to publish activities to the news feed and profile pages of Facebook, subject to individual users privacy settings. With the API, users can add social context to their applications by utilizing profile, friend, Page, group, photo, and event data. The API uses RESTful protocol and responses are localized and in XML format.
The
Twitter micro-blogging service includes two RESTful APIs. The Twitter REST API methods allow developers to access core Twitter data. This includes update timelines, status data, and user information. The Search API methods give developers methods to interact with Twitter Search and trends data. The API presently supports the following data formats: XML, JSON, and the RSS and Atom syndication formats, with some methods only accepting a subset of these formats
http://www.programmableweb.com
For entrepreneurs, one of the best features of Twitter is it’s API. Twitter allows developers to tap into its stream of 1 billion monthly tweets to create new applications and websites. This Twitter API has spawned several unique applications and projects that have benefited internet users in a variety of ways. This API has also spawned several real time search engines, such as
Sency, which tap into sources such as Twitter to offer real time results for internet users.
A result of this API is that Twitter’s real time data is syndicated across the web. So, even if you are a not a user of Twitter, you can get real time information from multiple places. So people whom have never signed up for a social networking site – can still see what is being said right now on the real time web. However, Facebook is very different.
When you visit Facebook.com – you can’t easily search other users status updates. And, since Facebook doesn’t give out its data via an API – other websites can’t leverage Facebook’s real time data to offer something for internet users. There are tons of Facebook apps, but those are there to benefit existing Facebook users. Since the Facebook API isn’t available to outside developers – if you aren’t a user of Facebook – you probably aren’t going to be able to learn much about what is going on at Facebook.
Facebook wants its users data to be shared with users’ friends, not the world. Web developers would jump at the opportunity to “run” with the Facebook stream of data to build exciting new websites and to improve existing websites. However, without an API – this hasn’t happened yet.
Twitter wants developers to run with external applications because if those applications grow, Twitter will be the glue that holds those applications together. This, in effect, ensures Twitter’s future. For example, there are hundreds of websites which Twitter has no ownership in, but which take advantage of Twitter’s free API. If those sites grow and receive 100 million visitors per month – that will benefit Twitter because it makes “Tweeting” even more important because now your Tweets will get distributed not only on Twitter, but also on the sites all over the web which are powered by Twitter. By empowering web developers, Twitter has an army of entrepreneurs out there baking in the Twitter feed to their properties. So, the question is – will Facebook ever play this game?
In October of 2009, Facebook announced Open Graph API which was a move in this direction. This API, which is net yet available, will allow other websites to develop a Facebook like page, powered by Facebook technology, without the page having to be on Facebook.com. This would empower websites to have the tools offered to Facebook users live on an external website controlled by an outside webmaster. While this will be something new for webmasters to tap into– it most certainly won’t offer anything close to what Twitter currently offers.
Over time, developers hope they will have more access from Facebook, and slowly, some more tools and functions may become available. At the same time, developers are being empowered by Twitter to run with great new products. Twitter is clearly leading the charge to fuel continued innovation for everyone to have access to throughout the mainstream web.
http://soshable.com/a-major-difference-between-twitter-and-facebook/
The ever-escalating battle between Facebook and Google Plus for social networking supremacy has reached a new level of competition in recent days. Facebook has revealed their next
slew of changes that includes an overhaul of user profiles with the new Timeline profile, their new Open Graph API, and the ticker. Google Plus has finally made their social network available to everyone, gotten hangouts onto mobile phones, and allowed big audiences to view hangouts (beyond the maximum of ten people actually hanging out).
For the first time ever Facebook has serious competition (well, not
too serious) and it has forced them to really think about the service they offer. On the other hand, Google jumped into the game years after Facebook established dominance and it has forced them to act quickly and to be innovative in their approach to social networking. However, I believe Facebook is going to either: 1) smother Google+ because they are simply THAT big, 2) force Google+ to reconsider their target market and become more of a niche social network, or 3) simply just stop worrying about Google+ and keep doing their own thing.
http://joshmilenthal.com/2011/10/facebook-vs-google-plus-why-it-will-benefit-you-in-the-end/
