Amidst all the hubbub about social mediareferrals this week, Google has finally made the +1 button useful. It now works the way we all thought it would, and it takes full advantage of Google Plus’s rich formatting in posts.
Visitors can now share links to Web pages with their Google Plus circles by clicking +1. It opens a box for adding a comment, and it allows the reader to customize the snippet (also known as a +Snippet) of text and images that will appear in his or her stream. It also adds the option of in-line annotations, like Facebook Like buttons do, so you can see the names and faces of friends who have +1’d a page.
Now that +1 can finally put some social oomph behind a page, it’s a good idea for web masters to format their pages to suit it. The Google Webmaster Central blog shows how to identify the page elements that will go into a page’s +Snippet by default.
Here’s more from the Google Plus team:
Meanwhile, as Google +1s its social sharing feature, Facebook’s ubiquitous button just got disliked in Germany. The Like button is now illegal in the state of Schleswig-Holstein for violating privacy laws.
When you want to share a Web page with your social networks, which buttons do you click? Sound off in the comments.
