DoAT, the First iOS App to Incorporate Google+
By: Hillel Fuld
Two weeks and ten million users later, Google+, Google’s new social network is an internet hit. While some argue it is not a Facebook Killer and others claim Twitter is Google’s real competition here, there is no denying that Google+ has taken off in an already saturated market of social networks.
Except there is one problem. While the Facebook app is the most downloaded iPhone app ever, and there are dozens of iOS Twitter apps out there, the Google+ iOS app is still in the process of being approved by Apple. That leaves all us Google+ iOS users (and it is a safe assumption that there are quite a few) using the half-baked and feature-lacking Google+ Web app in safari. Let’s just say, I was out the other day trying to access Google+ using the Web app and the experience was far from pleasant.
Source: TechCrunch
So what does a Google+ user who wants to share something on the new platform from their iPhone do? Well, an iPhone app called DoAT or Do@ that originally launched at TechCrunch Disrupt is the first iPhone to include Google+ in its sharing options as well as its “Social” section, which includes all the sites you would expect to see under the social category.
So with all this hype, why are there not hundreds of iOS developers creating apps for the new social network? Simply put, Google has not yet enabled it by offering an API for Google+. That means no 3rd party apps can access the new platform. So how is DoAT offering this then?
The new DoAT release that includes Google+ integration clearly included some out of the box thinking, as did the concept for the app itself. Basically, the new feature enables a user to share an article they are reading within DoAT by utilizing the Web HTML5 app. As soon as you select Google+ as the platform you want to share the article on, a Web page is opened within the app with the title and link of the article inserted. It also includes a short mention that it was shared using DoAT from the iPhone. As MG Siegler puts it, there is nothing wrong with a little self promotion in this case, since the guys behind DoAT really did do something worthy of praise here.
DoAT, in case you have not yet tried it, is a free iPhone app that aims to revolutionize mobile search, which is clearly not yet optimized to its full potential. The app does a great job offering relevant results to search queries but the main challenge here is to get users to forget their search behavior on the desktop and learn to search differently on their mobile devices.
