Last week Google announced a new program called +1. While still being beta tested, the +1 button is akin to the Facebook Like button, except it’s on the Google search engine, visible to 100’s of millions. Google will show +1 buttons next to all search results and ads and will encourage other sites soon to include +1 buttons on their sites, the way many of us do now with Facebook Like buttons.
Google has lost a lot of ground in recent years to various social networks, most notably, Facebook, which allows your friends, neighbors, and acquaintances to recommend restaurants, services, movies, websites, and more. Where for years, if you wanted to find information online about any of these venues, you would go to Google and do a search, today, we are more and more trusting the recommendations of our social circle, which of course is the whole intention of social networks. Google hopes to jump on this bandwagon with this new +1 service.
Here is a video from Google explaining this new service. We will keep you apprised of how +1 is or is not adopted by the online world over the next few months.
