Google has unveiled the first developer application programming interfaces for Google+, the company's new social network.
The launch is the first step toward developers creating Google+ apps and integrating the social network into existing apps.
"I’m super excited about how the Google+ project brings the richness and nuance of real-life sharing to software, and today we’re announcing our first step toward bringing this to your apps as well by launching the Google+ public data APIs," Google Developer Advocate Chris Chabot said in a Google+ post.
Google made it clear that Thursday's API release was focused on public data only -- they can only retrieve public posts and public profile data.
As developer Mohamed Mansour notes on Google+, there are not a lot of APIs in this release. Mansour says that Google+'s first APIs only allow for querying of a single person or an activity/action on Google+. This could lead to simple apps that show off a user's public Google+ stream, but these APIs wouldn't allow TweetDeck or Hootsuite to support posting to Google+.
According to one recent report, developers are excited by the prospects of Google+. Two-thirds of developers believe that Google+ has the potential to challenge or catch up with Facebook. And it will certainly need the support of developers to compete, especially as its rapid growth begins to wane.