By launching the Google +1 button, the search leader has positioned itself firmly as the follower to social networking leader Facebook and their like button. The concept is very similar if not exactly the same – allowing users to like all sorts of web content including articles and blog posts. It is unclear how popular this initiative will become but with the company owning such a dominant portion of the search market – enough for even Microsoft to start complaining about antitrust issues in Europe, Google can likely get huge numbers of likes – I mean +1s. 
The video above shows how it works and if you were hoping for some sort of benefit beyond what is provided with other social sharing buttons, you’ll be disappointed. At least for now.
Some thoughts on what the company could do with this new service include:
- A daily digest of +1 suggestions – things your friends like but more importantly, things you may like based on your past searches, Gmail content, etc. Creepy, I know but that’s where we’re headed. Think of this as social meeting traditional Google alerts.
- Customized prioritized integration into search – allowing users to select +1 priority in their search results on a sliding scale from one to ten. In other words if I slide my +1 preference to 10, I’ll receive answers to my query which rely heavily on the ratings of others as opposed to simply an algorithm.
- +1 accounts allowing others to follow you – like they would follow you on Twitter. Of course having the ability to add comments to +1 entries would be nice as well. Ideally with no 140 character limit please.
- A promise to add +1 integration to Android devices – perhaps a button which lives in the same place on all tablets and smartphones running this OS?
