Google Adds More Functionality To +1 Button

Google continues to update the functionality of Google+ with the news that social networking users can now share webpages they like by clicking the now ubiquitous Google +1 button.

This Google +1 button exists on more than 1 million websites and gets more than 4 billion daily views, double from last month.

The +1 button is Google’s version of Facebook’s Like button. In June, Google made the tool available to publishers, who can add it to their websites with a few lines of code. However, the +1 button had little purpose because it posed no connective tissue to other web services.

Circles Construct

Google+ is the company’s new social network, allowing users to connect with friends, family, colleagues and strangers through Circles, a social construct designed to promote massive sharing by letting anyone follow anyone else in the network.

After enabling sharing separately, Google+ and +1 now enable sharing together, according to Vic Gundotra, a senior vice president of engineering for Google.

Essentially, Google+ users who click a +1 button will be able to blast that webpage or ad they like to anyone they want within their Google+ Circles. The idea is to facilitate even more sharing than usual.

“Clicking the +1 button is a great way to highlight content for others when they search on Google,” Gundotra said. “But sometimes you want to start a conversation right away – at least with certain groups of friends. So beginning today, we’re making it easy for Google+ users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button. Just +1 a page as usual and look for the new “Share on Google+” option. From there you can comment, choose a circle and share.”

Also, when users click the +1 button to share, they will see snippets of links, images and descriptions in the sharebox, similar to what they would see when they share content in Google+. Publishers will be able to customise their +snippets when these features become available over the next week worldwide.

Google Updates

Users hungry to try the new +1/Google+ integrations can test it by heading to the Platform Preview page and signing up to test the latest Google+ features.

The integration between Google+ and +1 is the latest in a few integrations between Google’s new social network and its existing products. Google is already indexing Google+ posts on Google.com, and enabling the conduction of Google Hangouts video chat sessions from YouTube.

Google is also enabling sharing between Google+ and Gmail’s people widget, and letting Google Books users share books they like to read with fellow users on Google+.