Google is taking another crack at becoming a major player in online social search with a new "+1" feature. The company's other attempts at harnessing social networking -- including Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Orkut -- were considered failures for the most part. Many experts say that Google is great at organizing information with computers and complex algorithms... not so much with social networking functions (and we tend to agree!).The new "+1" button on Google search results is basically a social layer that allows you to give your stamp of approval for a web page. It's designed to show people in your online social network -- including friends and Gmail contacts -- what you consider to be the best stuff on the Web.
Google hopes that the +1 feature will allow them to harness human opinion to improve personalized search results. Also it may, if successful, allow them to compete more with Facebook in the social search arena. According to SEO/search engine expert Danny Sullivan:
"It's a killer combination if you put them both together, and I think that's where Google's big challenge will be in all of this... They don't still seem to get the whole social aspect of things. They don't have any expertise in building these hugely successful social products. Facebook does."
It'll be interesting to see how many people actually participate with the +1 system and give their opinions. We certainly hope it doesn't flop like Google Wave did!
Learn some mo': With +1, Google really, really wants to be your friend
