Make sure you’re familiar with these major social APIs – they could make all the difference to your social engagement levels
Facebook developer
developers.facebook.com
The Facebook developer portal is invaluable for when you’re trying to find the hidden gems of the API and test them out in the wide range of tools they off er. It is also the place where you can get that all-important API key that will allow you to connect to the API from your site.
Google+ API
developers.google.com
developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/
The Google+ API is the programming interface to Google+. You can use the API to integrate your app or website with Google+. This enables users to connect with each other for maximum engagement using Google+ features from within your application.
Twitter API
dev.twitter.com
All the documentation you need for the Twitter API, although there are a few holes in it, so some guesswork is required. The in-depth stuff is covered, as well as the more simple tasks, such as adding Tweet and Follow buttons to your website, on top of embedding Twitter Cards.
Pinterest API
developers.pinterest.com
The Pinterest Developers Platform is a suite of tools that help you reach Pinners in new ways. Right now, there are 3 ways to use the platform to increase your reach: through the API, add-ons and Rich Pins. Pinterest API lets you access users’ Pinterest data, like their boards, Pins, followers and more. The Pinterest API uses OAUTH and allows both read and write permissions when interacting with a user’s content.
LinkedIn API
developer.linkedin.com/apis
If you are more interested in the business side of APIs, make sure you have a look at the LinkedIn documentation. Here you will be able to pull down user data relating to their employment history. This is useful if you want to pre-populate job application forms on your website.
The Flickr API
flickr.com/services/api
With over 5 billion photos (many with valuable metadata such as tags, geolocation, and Exif data), the Flickr community creates wonderfully rich data. The Flickr API is how you can access that data. In fact, almost all the functionality that runs flickr is available through the API. And the API is completely free to use, as a service to our members as well as developers and other integrator, so they can create even more ways to interact with photos beyond flickr.
Instagram API
instagram.com/developer
This site features documentation for all the standard API stuff , as well as iPhone-specific hooks that allow you to open Instagram images in the app, rather than a standard browser. It also features some pretty cool documentation related to real-time interaction.
