Search engine giant Google has developed a new application programming interface (API) for social networking sites.The Social Graph API allows developers of new social sites to make information about the different connections between web users readily available.
In a blog post, Google said that the API would be particularly useful for people who sign up to a new social networking application but cannot get the most out of it because they do not have any friends on the site.
The API searches the web for publicly declared connections between website users in the same way that the Google search engine looks for links between different pages.
However, the interface returns JavaScript object notation data structures rather than links to HTML pages.
These structures contain data on those relationships between internet users that have been made public knowledge on various websites and enable developers to allow those signing up to a new site to see who they know is already registered.
"You can make it easy for users to bring their existing social connections into a new website and as a result, users will spend less time rebuilding their social networks and more time giving your app the love it deserves," software engineer Brad Fitzpatrick said on the Google Code Blog.
Earlier this month, Google launched the iGoogle Themes API, which allows users to develop their own theme for the Google homepage by creating header and footer images, providing an XML file containing metadata and colour information, and submitting the theme to Google.
