Google Plus released an API for developers last week, and now comes the launch of the Hangouts API for developers.  Starting today, the API will be available for testing purposes, only for developers on the Google Plus platform.

The new Hangouts API will enable developers to build real time applications on their own that use Hangout, similar to the built-in YouTube player that Google has developed.  For creating web apps using the API, developers need to register the application with Google Plus team and need to specify who from their group can load it into a Hangout.

Google says a developer app will behave like a normal web app, but it can use the new APIs like synchronization for real time conversation.  Further, the developer will have the option to create ‘shared state’ of all instances of their app.  This will allow real time notifications to users when changes are made to the app. For media-rich content a few multimedia APIs are included that allow the app to do video feeds or mute the audio of the Hangout participants.  The Hangout API would enable developers to build free apps for gaming, webcasts, podcasts and more.

Google added a number of other features to its Google Plus Hangouts such as Google Doc editing, screen sharing and sketching. Hangouts users now get options to share their screen with other video chat users, share and work on a Google Docs document together, and use Sketchpad.  Hangouts are also available on the latest version of the Google+ app on Android smartphones.  The other improvement is the introduction of search that lets you search for people and posts.

Google Plus now has registered more than 25 million unique visitors per month. Google announcement came just few days ahead of Facebook’s annual f8 conference, which is focused on software developers who build apps for the network.   Facebook has already introduced several similar features that Google has announced today through its network. There’s no doubt that Google is promoting its social networking site at the right time.