I do believe Rick is planning on working on API access to threads in the future.
As for integrations, I'm sure if they contact him he'd be more than willing to help them; he did this with FlashChat.
I for one see integrations as a luxury, there are so many features that everyone is hoping for that demanding one thing right now for one user is pretty outlandish... especially since there are plenty of existing options at UBBDev currently...