G[oogle]Data API & Standards

We’re in the throws of re-visioning gnip.xsd and that’s led to pondering Google’s Data API. If you haven’t noticed, at the interface level (not at a service level), there is a high degree of overlap between Gnip’s API, and Google’s Data API. We both chose REST as the primary interface, and data moves through as XML. Google decided to support both RSS and ATOM, while Gnip has constructed it’s own XML. From a system efficiency standpoint, our own boiled down schema makes sense. We’re a message aggregator, and message transmission and processing have to be done at scale (RSS & ATOM are heavy). That said, we’ll be offering ATOM and RSS based formats in the future, as our internal view of data doesn’t always match how folks want to consume it.

As for adopting the Google Data API, we have other priorities at the moment. A GData interface to Gnip as a service definitely has its appeal. I could see Gnip using it as the stepping stone to accessing Gnip activities as RSS/ATOM. Selfishly, Gnip could leverage GData’s convenience libs, and any time you can aggregate use of convenience libraries, everyone wins.