Simply put, Google is king of user experience. Click the Facebook or Twitter buttons to the right. Then click the +1. Yes, I am asking you to promote my site, but that’s not the point. Did you notice anything different? Maybe, maybe not.
I, like a ton of people, am constantly logged in to Twitter, Facebook, and my Google Account (usually through Gmail). If you haven’t authorized ShareThis (the lovely developers that make all my social buttons except Google +1 work), you’ll get two separate pop ups for Twitter and Facebook, one to authorize ShareThis to your accounts and one to add your notes. You’ll get 0 pop ups for +1. That is KEY! You just get a little animation and see the number go up once. Since it launched, I +1 anything that has the button easily viewable. It doesn’t take any extra work. But there is a barrier to entry for Twitter and Facebook, because I have to authorize the sharing, and then annotate the link. That’s a lot of work compared to +1. That’s the difference between grabbing drive-thru food on your way home and making a homemade pizza. Google got this one right.
Is +1 going to kill Twitter and Facebook? Not a chance. The extra step for Twitter/Facebook means that the person sharing gets to add their viewpoints, which makes the link more valuable to that person’s followers. It also means that each shared link is in a different class than the ones that weren’t shared. Google isn’t even directly competing with Twitter and Facebook. Twitter and Facebook can continue to be the dominant social networks, and Google will add social to searching and linking. And wow, does Google get the whole process perfect.
Finally, everyone’s asking if this product will be another Buzz, Wave, etc. Nope. Google’s learned that as awesome as they are, they can’t drive changes on their own. Both the Google Wallet announcement earlier this week and +1 both point to Google using partners to drive their changes. Look at the official announcement for a list of partners signing on from day 1. If you haven’t added it to your site yet…..
What are you waiting for!
If you want to add it, just use Google’s (again) super easy tool to add +1 to your site.
About Josh Gachnang
