Picnik users will be familiar with all of those cute little picnic-related messages that appear while Picnik carries out various functions. Well, that’s the message that appears now, as Google prepares to shut down the service.

Picnik will be closing April 19, 2012.

In fact, Picnik is only one of a handful of Google products the company is shutting down. In a blog post called “Renewing Old Resolutions For The New Year” Google announced that it will be shutting down: Picnik, Urchin, Needlebase, Google Message Continuity (GMC) and the Social Graph API.

The Picnik team says on the Picnik blog:

Amazing photos are created in Picnik so we have launched a new feature,Picnik Takeout, that easily downloads your photos to your desktop in convenient zip files. You may also elect to copy your photos to Google+ where you can store and share your creations. You may request your photos at any time and use this handy tool as many times as you like until our closing date of April 19, 2012.

Premium customers will get a full refund within the week, the team says. Additionally, premium features will be free to all until the service shuts down.

On GMC, Google says, “In December 2010 we launched an email disaster recovery product for enterprise customers that use Google’s cloud to back up emails originally sent or received in an on-premise, Microsoft Exchange system. In the time since we launched, we’ve seen hundreds of businesses sign up for it. By comparison, in that same time, we’ve seen millions of businesses move entirely to the cloud with Google Apps, benefitting from disaster recovery capabilities built directly into Apps. Going forward we’ve decided to focus our efforts on Google Apps and end support for GMC. Current GMC customers will be able to use GMC for the duration of their contract and are encouraged to consider using Google Apps as their primary messaging and collaboration platform.”

Regarding Needlebase, the company says, “We are retiring this data management platform, which we acquired from ITA Software, on June 1, 2012. The technology is being evaluated for integration into Google’s other data-related initiatives.”

Regarding the Social Graph API, Google says, “This API makes information about the public connections between people on the web available for developers. The API isn’t experiencing the kind of adoption we’d like, and is being deprecated as of today. It will be fully retired on April 20, 2012.”

Finally, with regards to Urchin, Google says, “In 2005 we acquired Urchin, whose online web analytics product became the foundation for Google Analytics, helping businesses of all sizes measure their websites and online marketing. We’re fully committed to building an industry-leading online analytics product, so we’re saying goodbye to the client-hosted version, known as Urchin Software. New Urchin Software licenses will no longer be available after March 2012.”

In the same announcement, Google said it is also open sourcing Google Sky Map.

Publishers can use it to look up advertiser data or their own info. Advertisers can use it to look at publisher data or their own info. Developers can integrate data from events that occur in the Network into their own sites and internal systems.

“Publishers can now use the Google Affiliate Network API to more easily access data that advertisers have chosen to share with them (such as payout rank and advertiser category),” says product manager Ali Pasha. “Previously, publishers had to manually access this shared data through the Google Affiliate Network interface. Advertisers can also access their own information through the API.”

“Advertisers can use the API to look up data that publishers have chosen to share with them (such as payout rank and publisher classification),” Pasha says. “Previously, advertisers had to manually access this shared data through the Google Affiliate Network interface. Publishers can also access their own information through the API.”

Google says the API allows access to all significant event-level data for transactions and actions.

You can find documentation for the API here.

These are achieved using two methods: activities.search and people.search. The documentation can be found here and here respectively.

The former lets users search across the body and comments of public posts. The latter searches across public profile info including fields such as name, bio, location, tag line, and description.

“Our first API release let you retrieve public posts,” says Google+ API software engineer Jordanna Chord. “We’ve now added ways for you to see how people are publicly engaging with those posts — you can find out who reshared a post or who +1’d a post, and you can read the comments on a post.”

For that, developers can use the method people.listByActivity. Documentation on that here.

Developer use of the Google+ APIs will be key in making Google’s social network more useful across a variety of applications. APIs certainly worked wonders for making Twitter relevant to more people.

Of course Google+ is really just part of the greater Google network.

While Google will no doubt launch various APIs for its social network, now we get to see third-party apps take advantage of what it has to offer, even if in a still limited capacity. Long story short, Google+ should get a lot more useful now. You know how most of the hardcore Twitter users were using it mostly through third-party apps?

“We started with Google’s own products, added the +1 button for site owners and content publishers, and introduced games from a handful of partners,” says Chris Chabot of Google+ Developer Relations. “That’s just the beginning though — we want every one of you who builds applications to be able to include rich sharing, identity, and conversations in your app.”

“Google+ gives users full control over their information, supporting everything from intimate conversations with family to public showcases and debates,” says Chabot. “This initial API release is focused on public data only — it lets you read information that people have shared publicly on Google+.”

“Because we’re starting with public data only, you simply need to register your app before making requests,” he adds. “And if you aren’t yet sure which Google+ user is running your app (for example, because they’re installing it for the first time), then you can use the new plus.me OAuth2 scope to ask the user who they are.”

If you’re a developer, you can of course get the documentation at developers.google.com/+. The company tells developer to follow three simple guidelines:

1. Put the user first
2. Be transparent
3. Respect user data

If you’re a Google+ user, you can probably look forward to finding new and interesting ways to use your Circles.

MG Siegler is sharing an email he says was sent from Google Ventures (Google’s investment arm) to portfolio companies, which reads:

The Google+ team is going to be starting to roll out some of their APIs to our Trusted Tester program in the next few days (followed by a more general availability in the next few weeks). They’ve agreed to give this early access to a small number (2-4) of our portfolio companies.

If you’re interested, please email me back with your company name, contact name, and email address.

We’ve contacted Google about this, hoping to get a better idea of how big this group of “Trusted Testers” is, and how far it extends beyond Google Ventures-backed companies.

Google has taken its time with nearly every aspect of Google+, including the launch of the social network itself. The company is clearly trying very hard to get social right this time, which is why we have yet to see the APIs’ availability as well as the availability of brand profiles. It’s also why Google has been so strict about such profiles, shutting down ones that were already created. Google wants to get things right.

It makes sense that they test the APIs with a trusted group, though there is bound to be some criticism about Google Ventures-backed companies getting any special treatment. Again, we’ll see how Google responds regarding the size of the group.

Update: A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews, “We definitely plan to involve developers and publishers in the Google+ project, but we don’t have specific details to share just yet.”

The APIs are bound to contribute greatly to the future success of Google+. They will no doubt unleash an entire ecosystem of Google+ functionality arose the web and mobile devices providing limitless ways for people to access and engage with the social network , which means more reasons to keep using it.

Getting the APIs right is critical for Google+.

Jason Costa, who works on Platform at Twitter writes:

If you’ve used OAuth Echo for image uploads, you’ll find that the new method available at POST statuses/update_with_media is simpler and requires fewer dependencies. One of the first things you’ll notice about this method is the host name: status updates with media can only be executed on upload.twitter.com rather than api.twitter.com. Using this alternative host name for the upload path ensures high availability and flexibility.

Please adhere to our display guidelines when rendering Tweets with media. Be sure to link the URLs included in the Tweet text to the original URL, and the Display URL should be displayed as the anchor text for the link. For example, displayed text should read pic.twitter.com/SLUG, and not t.co/SLUG. It’s also important to note that our rate limits still apply – expect to see HTTP 403 errors returned if the user is over their daily media limit or tries to exceed the number of updates allowed. PNG, JPG, and unanimated GIFs will be supported.

More developer talk on this topic here.

Twitter also said it will soon incorporate the media upload feature in its mobile clients.

If third-party Twitter photo services like TwitPic and YFrog were worried about Twitter’s native photo sharing service itself, the API and pending mobile app implementation should only add to the concerns. Although, it’s not as if they wouldn’t have expected this.

Twitter’s photo service is powered by PhotoBucket.

The company is working with Mozilla to unify this along with a similar project it is working on. The goal is to create a single API. Mozilla released the OpenWebApps add-on for Firefox about a month ago. It’s all about linking apps together.

“For example, if you use Flickr to share photos, then the Flickr Web App should let you easily share and integrate your Flickr photos with other Web Apps,” said Ben Adida, Tech Lead for Identity at Mozilla. “If you use Twitter to share links with your friends, then other Web Apps should allow you to easily share via Twitter.”

The Web Intents, which Google speaks of, is described as a framework for client-side service discovery and inter-application communication. “Services register their intention to be able to handle an action on the user’s behalf,” explains WebIntents.org. “Applications request to start an Action of a certain verb (share, edit, view, pick etc) and the system will find the appropriate Services for the user to use based on the user’s preference.”

Google software engineer James Hawkins explains, “In today’s browser ecosystem, web apps are completely disconnected or require the use of complicated APIs in order to make use of a third-party service, e.g., posting a comment to Twitter from your custom publishing domain. What if we could give sites the ability to leverage these services without any knowledge of the chosen service, except that it provides some set of predefined functionality?”

“Android OS addresses this problem with Intents, a facility for late run-time binding between components in the same or different applications,” he continues. “In the Intents system, the client application requests a generic action, e.g. share, and specifies the data to pass to the selected service application. The user is given a list of applications which have registered that they can handle the requested intent. The user-selected application is created in a new context and passed the data sent from the client, the format of which is predefined for each specific intent type.”

He says the API will provide the same benefits of Android Intents, but better suited for web apps. Suffice it to say that web apps should be getting more interesting and useful.

This should help Google’s Chrome Web Store and Chrome OS.

“Developers looking for a blog search API often find the APIs that do exist are providing a variation of a web index,” says Rahul Hampole with the Yahoo Search BOSS team. “We decided to take a different approach. Yahoo! developed a custom blog index where the relevancy is specifically tuned for blogs. This allows us to provide you a wealth of data such as the provider, the author, date of post and in certain cases, contextually relevant terms associated with the article.”

“By their very nature, web indices used for blog search cannot provide the complex functionality that developers demand,” explains Hampole. “For example, try finding a commercial API that will give you all the blog articles written on ‘Yahoo’ in the last week sorted by date. Yes, I know, I couldn’t find one either. Developers can now make that exact query on BOSS and build a rich powerful application. As always, BOSS developers get maximum flexibility on the display of this data.”

Yahoo has set the pricing at ten cents per 1,000 queries. Users can apply to show advertising when they sign up, and those who have already signed up for BOSS can use Blog Search immediately.

Yahoo says it has hundreds of developer sites using BOSS for millions of queries each day. ” We have seen fascinating applications in social, mobile and on the web that are using the service,” says Hampole. “Our goal is to nurture and grow this ecosystem by continuing to add new services and helping you monetize your offering.”

He says the team’s next goal is to “shake things up in mobile,” adding that they’re not planning on a BOSS OS.

Earlier this year, Yahoo launched BOSS v2, which brought a number of new things to the table (including Yahoo Search advertising).

“To gain access to our ad creation and management systems, you have to demonstrate the ability to build significant value for our users and our marketers,” Facebook says.

Josh Constine at InsideFacebook, who first reported this, says that we may see many new Ads API tools and service providers, and that “The influx might create new small acquisition targets for Page management companies, or commodify ads management, with an economy tier of tools and services emerging to serve smaller advertisers. Alternatively it might lead Page management companies to build ads products and services in-house, slowing the recent wave of consolidation between the two industries.”

“Over a million developers have already built socially focused applications on Facebook platform,” the company says. “Our marketing API program supports developers who are building applications for marketers – tools that make it easier, for instance, for marketers to build and engage their communities on Facebook Pages, to amplify word of mouth via marketplace advertising and sponsored stories, and to effectively measure social engagement via custom dashboards.”

“These apps are built on one or more of our marketing APIs: Open Graph, Pages, Ads, or Insights APIs. It’s important to note that these APIs are available directly to marketers who are building in-house tools for their own use, and also to third-party developers or agencies who want to license their tools to marketers.”

At its Marketing APIs site, Facebook provides three case studies showing how three vendors have used the Ads API. One shows how a tool from Keybroker helped Beauty Planet reach a new audience and increase order volume. Another shows how a tool from AdParlor helped Funzio acquire new users for a game. The other shows how a tool from 77Agency helped Vionnet build an online community.

Beauty Planet saw significant growth in order volume, high clickthrough rates on ads, good cost-per-acquisition, more traffic to its website, and a new customer base. Funzio got about 4.5 million more monthly active users in just a few months, high ratings from users, and and high clickthrough rates.

“Out of all channels to acquire game users, Facebook Ads is the most effective,” said Funzio President and COO Anil Dharni. “There is no other place where you can get the kind of targeting that you can get with Facebook Ads. AdParlor has been instrumental in helping us identify and target those positive ROI users.”

The Vionnet example resulted in 15,000 new likes in less than two months.

The application for the Ads API can be found here.

This leaves questions about what will become of services like TwitPic and Yfrog, which are essentially designed to serve this purpose. TwitPic does cater to videos as well, but how long until Twitter also caters to videos. They do seem to be competing with Facebook more and more, and the addition of video uploads would seem like an obvious addition for the future, especially in light of the photo announcement.

At the All Things Digital D9 conference today, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said, “We have over 600,000 of these developers. Anything we do is going to have some overlap with what they do. What we will try to do as a company is signal where we’re going so we can give you room to move up the value chain. Everyone has to understand we’re going to innovate.”

Apparently they haven’t been signaling very well so far, as TwitPic’s founder told Mashable, “We had no idea Twitter was building a photo feature. Communication between developers and Twitter has never been very clear and the relationships between Twitter and its developers has changed a lot since the Chirp conference last year. A more clear feature roadmap and better communication would have been much appreciated by all their developers.”

Dan Frommer at BusinessInsider points to a Twitter developer Google group, where Twitter’s Arnaud Meunier says:

Uploading photos to Twitter is currently available on the twitter.com desktop version, and its access is initially limited to a very small number of users. In the next couple of weeks, as we progressively ramp up the number of users who have access to the feature, we’ll provide you with more details about how you can use the “Tweet-with-photo” API.

As ever, if you have questions about the new media entity or our ToS changes, let us know on the list or through @twitterapi.

In other words, why Twitter’s new feature might not be the best thing in the world for the current models of TwitPic and YFrog, it looks like it will create some interesting opportunities for third-party apps in general.

Twitter will continue to support existing third-party photo sharing, so it’s not like Twitter is just kicking the TwitPics and the YFrogs out of the club. It’s more just a matter of whether or not people will continue to use them when Twitter has a native feature that does essentially the same thing.