Do you really want to +1 it?

by Iain Wilson

21 July 2011

Am I missing something here?

Google's nascent +1 facility is similar to the Facebook 'like' but ANYONE can see that you personally have +1'd a page. Doesn't this restrict how much people will use it?

google

You've maybe seen the +1 icons appearing after each entry on a Google search results page.

The idea is that you can click on the entry and it shows that you 'recommend' that page.

Thing is, it associates your Google public profile with the recommendation and everyone can see that you recommended it.

To quote Google+ Help:

"+1'ing is a public action. Anyone on the web can potentially see that you've +1'd content when they're searching on Google or viewing content you've +1'd. For this reason, you should only +1 pages when you're comfortable sharing your recommendation with the world."

So this is quite different from a Facebook 'like' where it's members of your network community that can see your recommendation. And I'm wondering how much people will use it when they know anyone/everyone can see their recommendations.

Seems to me to be at odds with the general concepts that Google are trying to achieve with the Google+ project.

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