If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em, right? That’s exactly what Google+ extension developer Mohamed Mansour has decided to do. Mansour has been creating extensions for Google+ ever since it was released, and many of them broke after the latest Google+ redesign.
Needless to say, the developer was upset with the lack of attention that was paid to developers who deeply cared about Google’s social platform. Google’s response was, well, not as warm as it could have been:
We appreciate and value developers contributing to our platforms and services, and continue to develop and support our official API. We can’t support applications built on undocumented, unofficial APIs, including those based on reverse-engineering or scraping Google+’s user interface.
While Mansour hasn’t left the Google+ platform as a user, he did take an opportunity to let his pretty big following there know about his next big project. Unsurprisingly, that project will not focus on Google+ at all, it’s built entirely with Facebook in mind instead. It looks like Google+ may have made an enemy.
In a post today, Mansour outlined a new project that aims to bring the popular Google+ Hangouts functionality to Facebook:
Introducing Facebook Video Parties!
Many of my friends are still on Facebook, and the best thing I liked about Google+ is simply the Hangouts. From the last two weeks (part-time), I have been trying to implement the good features I like from Google+ Hangouts including the wish list items that I always wanted to see.
It integrates well with Facebook Timeline, and you have full moderation controls if you want to do public parties. It would play nice with people in low connections and very high speed connections! You can even do study groups for an exam with a bunch of Facebook friends.
The project isn’t available for testing as of yet, but the screenshot that Mansour posted definitely looks promising:
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Currently, Facebook only allows you to chat with one person over video at a time, thanks to its Skype integration. Being able to have seamless video “parties” would be a phenomenal feature to have on Facebook, and I’m surprised that the company hasn’t rolled out an official one yet.
Even though Mansour has changed gears to work on a Facebook project, he promises that the video platform he’s creating will allow Twitter and Google+ users to join “Parties” eventually.
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