Design your way

Ever thought of using social media APIs? You should. They offer a lot of neat possibilities.

Popular social networks alike Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Twitter are service APIs’ most devoted users.

At the end of the day, developers have no better means than social APIs to expand the reach of their application, which is why these tools make absolute sense.

This article will give a closer look to the social media APIs used by each aforementioned network, but before we get down to details, let us explain what social media APIs actually mean.

How can social media APIs help you? To start with, they help display content on any app. This is how separate content units such as tweets, Facebook posts, or Flickr photos become visible to end users. Social APIs will also help distribute syndicated items, including retweets, threads, and many other.

Basically, they work for both primary content and related details, and are used to display everything from Facebook users’ birthdays to photo metadata and locations.

The biggest benefit of social media APIs, nevertheless, is putting content into a related service.

Check out these social media APIs

Facebook

The first one of these social media APIs is from Facebook.

Facebook also offers API for developers to build applications that would be useful to members of this popular community. An app designed using Facebook APIs would have access to all profile information and social connections, and would allow the user to post activities directly on users’ profiles/newsfeeds, where permitted.

Basically, Facebook APIs help give your app a more social context, and make use of your friends, contacts, images, groups, events, and similar data. All APIs are based on a RESful protocol, and trigger JSON responses.

Flickr

Flickr API will be useful to those looking to retrieve some Flickr photo sharing services through different feeds, including publicly available video, imagery, favorites, group pools, discussions, friends, and so on. The same set of APIs is then used to upload content of your own.

What Flickr APIs are best known for is the support for a variety of protocols (REST, XML-RPC, and XML), and the fact that its responses are available also in JSON and PHP formats. Documentation, on the other hand, will be stored in 14-API kit libraries

Foursquare

The V2 Foursquare APIs ensure that users will have access to all venues and locations in a company’s database. The offered APIs are: Real-Time API, Core API, Venues Platform, and Merchant Platform. They are all RESTful APIs which support JSON, JSONP, and XML.

Why use Foursquare APIs? As developers like to put it, this system makes real world information more accessible, and helps build tools that enable easy collections, locate facilities all around you, and help coordinate your events. Therefore, Foursquare is the ideal companion for your trips, nights out with friends, dinners, and so on.

Google+

Google+ APIs are Google+’s official programming interface you can use to embed the social network on your app or website. This way, users will be able to communicate with each other using familiar Google features, but still remain as engaged on your website as you want them to be.

Keep in mind, however, that the number of API calls your app can make will be limited by Google’s usage courtesy quota, and that in order to push the limits of that quota forward, you must make a request to Google’s Developer Console. You will be offered two types of API calls:

Google+ API (Sign-in) – For those methods that are approved by the scope http://ift.tt/18tkxUQ (people.get, and people.list).
Google+ API – For any other mehod

Each group imposes its own limitations, applying to all API calls that belong to that group.

DailyMotion

There is almost no person in the world who hasn’t heard of DailyMotion. The globe’s leading video platform offers users both viewing and storage capacity, and targets primarily developers looking to deliver and integrate videos across different platforms (consoles, desktop, mobile, set-top boxes, etc.). Their APIs are flexible and powerful, and what is most important – very affordable.

DeviantArt

You can integrate your app/website with DeviantArt in the following ways:

Use their Sta.sh and DeviantArt API to choose the parts which you want to integrate
Use the oEmbed API to use and display content prepared by DeviantArt
Use RSS API to fetch content prepared by DeviantArt

All APIs have been designed following open access standards; which means that developers can leverage them immediately from any of the off-shelf libraries. They are made simple and straightforward, but still provide a lot of interesting possibilities for creative developers.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is another open API web service for developers, intended to let them create events and users, and pull those together in their apps/websites. Plenty of Eventbrite data will be provided to them, meaning that they can either modify existing templates, or create events from scratch. The APIs can also be applied to retrieve transactions, organize venues, and list attendees.

GoodReads

Goodreads is, as passionate readers would agree, the best book-on-shelf API service to keep followers updated, link books by ISBN and similar methods, distribute author URL to friends and their friends, email news, and collect ISBN reviews. From a developer’s perspective, Goodreads provides unrestricted access to book data, and helps apps and websites dealing with books engage customers in a more social and personalized way.

There are many ways to put Goodreads API in action, including the application of their Reviews Syndication which has an impressive record of 10 million reviews on approximately 700,000 titles. With the API, you will be able to display those reviews on your app/website, and then use Goodreads Connect to give readers full access to what you have to offer.

Gravatar

Gravatar is a specific API services users subscribe to in order to create unique profiles and avatars (they are called Gravatars). Gravatars are in fact small images that will follow the user from one site to the other, and appear next to your name each time you perform a particular action.

The developer series of Gravatar won’t require app authentication (keep in mind that such will be needed for editing info in XML-RPC).

Hacker News

Hacker News offers easily accessible programmatic iOS and Android APIs for web devices that have implemented Firebase. The APIs are used to make calls and retrieve updates, comments, news, polls, and even jobs, all distributed by unique identifiers. HTTP calls, for instance, return JSON responses with actual text pulled in from an article, as well as URL links and associated metadata.

The APIs are available for free, but the company announced OAuth API as part of their future offer.

Imgur

Imgur’s APIs employ a standard interface to expose the whole Imgur infrastructure in external environments. Basically, the user can transfer all valuable imgur.com functionality on his app/website, using at the same time a preferred programming language.

Imgur’s APIs are in fact HTTP-request and XML/JSON-response RESTful APIs, alike those used by Twitter, Delicious, and Amazon’s S3. With only a bit of social API experience, you won’t be challenged to use them.

Currently, Imgur offers its third version of APIs which use OAuth 2.0. Therefore, you won’t have to encrypt your requests, but simply send them to https:// via SSL/TLS. This doesn’t change the fact that your app must be registered and authenticated, even where users are not allowed to log in.

Instagram

Instagram is iPhone’s flagship photo sharing application where users upload photos and display them to friends and contacts, in a manner fairly simpler than the one of Facebook and Twitter. Instagram also offers open API for developers, used mostly for user authentication, management of images and connections, uploading media, and other similar operations..

Kakao

Kakao was established in Korea, as the state’s leading social network that pursues streamlined communication and gaming excellence. The services include Kakao Talk, Kakao Group, Kakao Music, Kakao Story, Kakao Album, Kakao Game, and many others.

APIs are available only for Kakao Talk, in order to empower profile requests on other apps and websites. If you’re a Kakao user, for instance, you will be able to log into several different apps using the same credentials.

LinkedIn can be described as world’s number-one social network for business users. It was established in 2003, and currently serves millions of users in more than 200 countries worldwide. The service aims to enable people to share contact details and establish important connections (a feature called Connections), manage record databases, and invite other users to join the platform.

LinkedIn also offers API access to developers (RESTful), so that all contacts, jobs, relationships, companies, and interactions would be displayed by third-party providers.

LinkedIn strives for simplicity, and thus allows you to read data in JSON and XML, at an aggregation and granularity level you’ve chosen. You will also get OAuth 1.0a in order to authorize users and make REST calls. In order to do so, however, you must be an authorized developer.

Mastodon

Mastodon is an open-source an absolutely free GNU server for social-compatible networks. You can also think of it as a decentralized and simplified alternative to expensive, commerce-first platforms, which nevertheless eliminates the risk of monopolized communication. Mastodon is so simple and hassle-free that it can be used even by non-professionals.

Path

Path reminds in many ways of Facebook and Twitter, but the main difference between them is that it makes networking and sharing absolutely private. You can share all types of files and information with selected members, and chat one-on-one.

The platform’s API makes such functionality accessible from third-party apps and websites. Since there is no public data available, we invite interested developers to apply using the following link: http://ift.tt/1eGdtBt.

In terms of authentication, Path implements an OAuth 2.0 layer with all open standards typical for 3-legged authorization. This gives all OAuth users the possibility to authorize their applications, and not disclose at the same time their usernames and passwords.

Pinterest gives you RESTful APIs in order to integrate your favorite Pinterest Pin feature on other applications. Log in, and you will easily find all API info documented on their website.

Once you’re done reading the terms and policies and you’ve agreed to them, you can choose and add a limited number of testers and collaborators to help developing your new app. Upon authentication, you will get direct access to the Pins, profiles, follows, and blogs. With the right object ID, you will also be able to retrieve old information, and fetch it in for authenticated and confirmed users.

You will find this API easy to use, especially if using one of their clients’ SDKs (JavaScript, iOS, or Android).

With Reddit’s API, users will be able to access all submitted and approved stories on other platforms and websites. Some advanced functionalities are also at stake, including detailed account and sub-reddit moderations.

Snapchat

Snapchat’s Partners service is used to establish a connection between advertisers and Snapchat’s user community. The primary goal is to make Snapchat advertising more engaging and creative, both during pre-campaign strategies and execution.

Telegram is a platform designed for mobile messaging, famous by its highly encrypted delivery service that makes communication absolutely private. You can share messages, videos, and photos in private mode, and use the service’s open API to integrate such functionality to other application.

Telegram will also provide access to advanced contact management features, among which checking phones, retrieving and sending messages, uploading videos, and more.

Twitch

TwitchTV is a service designed for video broadcasting and community chat. It supports a variety of interesting gamification options such as commentary, leagues, gaming players and personalities, tournaments, and more. Its APIs consist of JavaScript SDK and REST API, and secure instant access to all Twitch data (team info, channels, users, and more).

Twitter

Twitter offers two RESTful APIs as parts of its microblogging services. The first integration method is REST API used by developers to access key platform data, including statuses, user info, and timelines. The second type is Search APIs that help interact with Twitter Search and Twitter Trends.

The supported data formats are JSON, XML, Atom syndication, and RSS, but you should remember that certain methods accept only specific combinations of those.

Tumblr

Tumblr APIs will help you read divers Tumblr data or write posts, which unlike those of regular blogs, won’t be displayed as newspaper columns. Tumblelogs are scrapbooks rather than journals, which as great as they may be, take too much time to format and prepare.

Tumblr is far more suitable for long text posts which you can easily create, find, and share, attaching all sorts of documents, images, quotes, links, video, or audio that could be relevant for them.

Vimeo

Another one of these social media APIs comes from Vimeo. YouTube’s most serious competitor Vimeo offers open API used to upload, host, transcode, or play a variety of video files, and embed such on different websites and applications. You can also use them to enable community sharing, in particular for Vimeo Home’s filmmakers. The calls are RESTful, and the responses are JSON.

VK

VK may not be the most popular, but it is certainly the largest European social network that serves more than 100 million users at the moment. All members registered on the platform have a personal profile, and post statuses and images the way they do on Facebook and Twitter.

The platform also enables chatting between members, and gives developers access to REST APIs in order to add or retrieve information.

Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo is China’s most popular microblogging website, whose APIs give developers programmatic access to the CMS service. Using those, the user can both read and write any of the service’s aspect, including the blogs, users, tags, comments, topics, relations, and so on.

The calls are RESTful ones, while responses in JSON. Training and installation info, however, is available only in Chinese.

Whatsapp’s Chat APIs are called Daemon APIs, and use HTTP and websockets to let users distribute and receive messages from this platform to their personal applications. What the APIs do in the case is to collect sources from Whatsapp’s PHP-based Chat-API library, and let the two apps interact seamlessly even if they’re not written in the same language.

WordPress

WordPress.org collates and hosts all installable WordPress versions, including the open APIs which offer sets of calls exposing tools and informational assets. Among other resources, you will also get to use their intelligent stats and contributor information, as well as secret keys for theme and plugin access.

Untappd

Untappd is known by users as the ‘experience sharing’ mobile app, and accurate locator for friends and contacts. The platform’s API allow developers to access, organize, and present Untappd data to their consumers, currently in a read-only mode. All data must also be approved by Untappd’s team in advanced, and each user must log into the system in order to access it.

For more details, contact api@untappd.com.

Youtube

Youtube’s Data APIs make it possible to integrate any program, app, or website with the popular channel, and let users perform many of the operations they usually do when streaming content. For instance, the APIs will provide the very same capability to browse for videos, check related content, and even retrieve standard feeds.

When authenticated as official users, they will also have the possibility to upload content, create and modify playlists, comment, and rate videos. The APIs are most useful for YouTube experience apps and platforms, as it gives developers programmatic access to all content and information that is available on YouTube. Responses are provided in XML.

Zomato

Zomato is the best known Indian guide on food, restaurants, and lifestyle. You will find its open API useful to let users access updated content directly from their app, and collect info such as restaurant listings, menus, discounts, galleries, location coordinates, reviews, and more.

The APIs cover over 18,000 food and hospitality venues in India’s 10 largest cities, and rank those according to a variety of factors. With them, you can also make REST calls, and receive responses formatted in JSON and XML.

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