The first decade of this new millennium…ahhhh those were the days… when Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist. Microsoft was constantly being threatened by the European and U.S. antitrust regulations. And look now, big G being sued by Msoft who ironically enough have accused Google of using technical tactics to keep their search & advertising European domination. (oh and Qwiki looks like the Wikipedia of the future, someone just found an embeddable +1 button… the world is going crazy)!
+1? Yep, that super secret and always experimental “social layer” that everyone was aware of, like Google’s music streaming service, their new status bar or those many other 1001 experiments just went live yesterday. And within less than 24 hours people are already cracking and embedding the “inexistent” button on their websites (without big G’s permission of course).
+1 will basically be “another” social button just like Facebook’s “like” or Twitter’s “retweet” but Google are positioning it as a way to share your favorite search results with your friends, family and the broader web in general. Your benefit? When browsing and searching the web through Google you’ll get recommendations of similar searches from your social circle or other web users.
The benefit for big G? …. The ads they serve via their platforms will get even more accurate and here’s a new justification to convince ad networks, brands and advertisers to stick to adwords rather than using alternative ad platforms (facebook, twitter…).
The whole thing is (as usual) an experiment, but you can join it on their experiments page (although you should expect to wait for a while before you start seeing the +1 button in your search results).
What’s next big G?
share news item