Google+ to allow third party apps for brand pages

Late last year Google+ launched Plus Pages as a way for brands to connect with users on the social network. The problem was that these pages couldn’t be managed with third party apps. But it seems Google+ is about to change all that.

“With Google+ Pages, millions of businesses and brands are now connecting with their followers in meaningful ways online,” writes Googler Eduardo Thuler in a post. “… many brands use third party tools to manage their social media presence across the web.”

It seems over the last couple of months Google has been stealthy testing third party tools with a select number of companies that provide social media management tools such as HootSuite, Buddy Media and Context Optional.

According to Thuler, the feedback so far has been great. “We’re getting a lot of positive feedback from these developers, the businesses they work with, and the Google+ community at large. So over the next several weeks we’ll be opening up these management APIs to hundreds more tool providers.”

Google+ has been notoriously guarding its API since launching in July 2011. There were no publicly available APIs, which was received with some criticism from the developer community. The social network has since been slowly opening up its API to the developer community for better user experience but this is the first time Pages API has been made available.

Despite being late the social race and receiving a fair amount of dismissal from users, the service seems to be growing quite strongly. As of the end of June, 150 million of the 250 million Google+ accounts use the service every month, and 50% of Google+ users visit every day. The average user spends 12 minutes per day in the Google+ stream, reports the The Next Web.