Will Norris

A few weeks ago I quietly (or not so quietly, as it were) disabled comments on my blog. It was something I’d been considering for a while, and I finally resolved to do it after talking with Shane Becker at IndieWebCamp back in June. Shane takes the stance that his site should be about him and his content. If you want to comment or respond, you’re welcome to do so… just find your own place to publish it (like your own blog, perhaps).

I’m not interested in building a community or a personal brand, so I really don’t care about capturing engagement here on my site. I do value a lot of the comments I get however, so I’m not looking to cut things off entirely. Instead, I’ve decided to outsource my comments to Google+.

Today we announced the launch of the Google+ API, starting with read access to public data. Using the new API together with the +1 button, I’ve added support to my snowflake to share my posts to Google+, and then to easily direct conversations from my blog to there. It allows me to keep my own home on the web dedicated to just my content, and at the same time leverage the great community that has formed around Google+.

Please try it out yourself, and let me know how it works for you. This was the work of a single evening, so I’m sure I’ll enhance it over time. Please file any bugs or feature requests you have.

https://github.com/willnorris/wordpress-snowflake

A couple of months ago, I mentioned how excited I was to reveal to family and friends what I’ve been working on at Google for the last year or so, Google+. Well, that was only partly true. What I’ve really been working on is the Google+ Platform, which we are finally starting to roll out today.

In many respects, today’s announcement is perhaps more exciting for myself and the team than it will be for some of you. The surface that we are launching today is small, just three methods focused on reading public data. That’s what we’re starting with. You won’t find the ability to post into the stream or +1 a post, or the ability to access a user’s circles. But what you will find is a small taste of what we’ve been working on for a long time. You’ll find a clean and simple API that should feel very natural because it follows RESTful designs and uses JSON data formats. You’ll find an API that uses industry standards like OAuth 2.0 and that is based on open formats like Activity Streams and Portable Contacts. You’ll find well-written documentation with in-line code samples and an in-line API explorer so you can play with every method, all hosted on our new Google Developers site that will redefine what it means to be Google developer. You’ll find an API that is relatively small, but one that is the start of something very, very big.

This is perhaps the most important project I’ve worked on in my professional life, and I’m incredibly proud of what we are beginning today. I’m excited to see what people will build with the API, and I’ll be sharing some of my own Google+ projects very soon.