Last week Google+ launched a major redesign, unfortunately the Google+ API didn’t change and is still read-only. That means there’s no way for apps like Instagram, Twitter and news readers to publish to Google+. It’s a big obstacle because that means users can only add new items to Google+ by used one of the Google+ apps, the website, or one of Google’s “share” buttons (like they’ve integrated with most Google apps and Google Reader).
No Instagram, Twitter, or other interesting content on Google+ make it boring and not worth visiting.
Except for sharing links, it’s hard to get anything interesting into Google+ except for photos. Their iPhone app has this “Automatic Upload” feature built in where the app will check my phone’s camera roll for new photos, and automatically upload them to Google+. After they’re uploaded I can choose who to share them with.
I’ve been using this feature in the evening, after I’ve taken photos over the course of the day with my iPhone. All the photos taken that day and saved to my iPhone’s Camera Roll get uploaded to Google+ and put into a new album for the day called something like “Monday 16, 2012”.
This little workflow let’s me:
- Share my photos on Google+
- Not have to manually organize and upload photos from my Mac, or through my iPhone (one at a time).
This has been one way I’m able to participate on Google+ with a very low overhead or time or energy. Here’s hoping to an expanded Google+ API in the near future.
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