Google has launched some significant new API's for it's social networking service Buzz this week. The most significant API released is a new real-time "firehose" feed that will allow all of the third-party developers to consume all of the real-time data from public Buzz messages. The firehose, which is powered by PubSubHubBub, opens up the door for building comprehensive Buzz analytical and data mining tools.
There are several companies using the newly created feed to pull in data. One of the launch partners is real-time search engine OneRiot, which now includes public Google Buzz messages in its search results. Buzz Mood is a sample application built by Google to showcase the new real-time feed feature. It isn't anything that will wow you, and a lot of the data seems useless. Nevertheless, the source code has been made available, and third-party developers now have free reign to start building firehose-enabled Buzz applications. Monitoring+traction is another big feature API that was released. With this API you can get the analytics of total shares of a particular URL in the public stream. In comparison, you already have link-tracking services for Twitter - Tweetmeme and Topsy. Tracking mentions, shares, consumption patterns, and reach of social influencers are hot topics in the tech world. Companies are clamoring for the ability to get the most comprehensive analytics of real-time data and metadata possible. Early releases are the same, even for a company as big as Google. A quick pop-in look at the public stream isn't anything to write home about. The majority of the data is just aggregated from other sites and pulled into the users Google Buzz accounts. These new API releases are a calculated attempt to get third-party developers to build out some cool tools in hopes of attracting more people to take Buzz seriously. Because currently, they don't. Buzz is among Google's largest plays into the social networking realm. So look for continued API releases to try to chip away at Facebook and Twitter's dominance in the space.
