How does social application integration work?

Question

Lately it has become increasingly common to integrate applications of various types into social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and even Github. I wanted to understand how this integration works. Gitter for example allows chat interaction in Github repositories... On Facebook, anyone can go to the developer section and create an app to interact with pages and people. Even Google Hangouts has apps to use to the taste of the user at the time of conferences. I’m very curious about how this works.

How could I reproduce something like this in an application? Do these platforms simply provide an API so that these additional apps can be integrated? Or is there something more? References for reading are very welcome... : D

Answer 1

The protocol used for application integrations is O-Auth. I never implemented it on the side of my application, just tested the use of integration with applications like those cited in your question.

Also until recently did not know that it was a standard for authentication from external clients to applications. The site that has all the documentation is: http://oauth.net/2/

Hopes to have helped!