Google has been trying for years to do something social to counter the growing Facebook dominance, but the results have been… underwhelming. Google Wave was confusing at best and purposeless at worst, and now lives in the deadpool.
Google Buzz is still going, but after its initial launch it lost momentum and hasn’t come close to challenging Facebook or Twitter.
Now, they’re trying something different, something with massive potential: they’ve added a Google-centric social element to their search results, with their recently-announced +1 feature. For users who have turned it on (you can turn on +1 in the Google Experiments page), a +1 button will appear next to all organic and paid results. Hitting the button will allow you to add a vote of support for the result or ad.
For web publishers, this holds a ton of potential – in theory, your reader or user base can +1 your site in Google’s results, which should improve your search ranking and share that user’s preference with his or her friends (for a great breakdown of +1’s potential value, check out Danny Sullivan’s post). The result is similar to Google’s use of Twitter, Buzz, and other social networks to show who shared a page when it shows up in their results. Taking search and inserting the social aspect might well be the Internet’s equivalent of peanut butter and chocolate.
What do you think? Have you used Google’s social attempts in the past – Buzz or Wave? Orkut, even? Do you think this time Google has managed to use their core advantage – search and a massive audience – to crack the social nut? Will you be +1-ing all over the Internet?
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