Interview: iPhone Developer talks Digg API
Technology news site Venture Beat recently broke the news that Digg, the social networking site for linksharing and newsgathering, was working on a new application programming interface (API) that would allow third-party developers to integrate full Digg functionality into their apps.
We reached out to Sprikit Software’s Scott Fitzhugh, developer of the iPhone app Shovel, for comment.
As a developer you’ve been fairly vocal about wanting Digg to open up to third-party applications such as yours. Will the introduction of this new API mean that users will be able to login, vote, and comment from Shovel?
YES! As a programer, one of the most difficult things to accept is that something simply “can’t be done.” We’ve been hard at work on the newest version of the Shovel and the foundation is there. I can say without hesitation that as soon as Digg makes these features available, they will be featured front and center in Shovel.
Has Digg directly reached out to your or other notable developers in the Digg marketplace to encourage adoption of this API?
Digg has been very responsive to thoughts and suggestions about the new API. There’s no release date yet so they haven’t quite moved on to that phase of things, but it’s nice to know that someone is listening.
Do you have any concern that this may somehow lead to Digg developing their own iPhone app? Does the release of this API make that possibility more or less likely in your eyes?
Yes and no. We’ve definitely had this discussion. But I get the feeling that Digg, in general, prefers web-apps over native apps. With or without their public API, I suspect if they wanted to be in the iPhone app business they would have done so already.
Digg has clearly lagged behind other social networks in terms of third-party involvement. Why is this?
One word. Spam. The Digg community hates it with a fiery passion that could consume a thousand suns, and the developers there have gone to great lengths to eradicate it. Creating an API that allows for programatic submission of comments, stories, and Diggs is likely to result in bots that automatically submit mass amounts of advertising. I’m sure they resisted the move as long as possible for this reason.
With no anticipated release date available for Digg’s new API, what can we expect to see from Shovel in the near future?
Shovel 3.0 is due out sometime in the next month (assuming the app review process goes smoothly) and will come in both free and pro flavors. It’s been recoded from the ground up, includes a story search, Instapaper integration, Facebook integration, has built-in email, a much more full-featured built-in browser, and is far and away a MUCH more rich experience than the current version of Shovel. We’re really excited about it. The free version will of course be a free (seamless) update for our existing users.
Interested in checking out what Shovel has to offer? Click here to download ver 2.0.1 absolutely free of charge.
[...] One of the biggest problems Shovel faces with the current lack of a fully-featured Digg API (coming soon!) is how difficult it is to bookmark stories for reading later and how tough it can be to share a [...]