Google adds share, snippet features to +1 button

After making it more sociable with a “friend annotation" feature, search giant Google added more muscle to its +1 button with two new features expanding its power to recommend online content. Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering, said the +1 button now includes an option to directly recommend or share a web page on one’s Google+ circles. “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," he said in a blog post. A second new feature, +Snippets, automatically includes a link, an image and a description in the sharebox as “a great way to jumpstart conversations with the people you care about." Gundotra said this is a potential boon for publishers. “With just a few changes to their webpages, publishers can actually customize their +snippets and encourage more sharing of their content on Google+," he said. Google launched the +1 button for websites last June to make it easier to recommend content across the web. Last July, Gundotra said the +1 button crossed two billion daily views, and has been made much faster. “Today the +1 button appears on more than a million sites, with over 4 billion daily views, and we’re extremely excited about this momentum," he said. “It’s just the beginning, however, and today we’re launching two more features that make +1 buttons more useful for users and publishers alike," he added. Gundotra said they are rolling out sharing and +snippets globally over the next week. Earlier, Google made the +1 button more social with the addition of friend annotations - seeing who among your friends “liked" a particular article. Google Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan said change to the +1 button rolled out late last week. “You may have already noticed faces and names when you hover over a +1 button ... This change rolled out late last week. Now, you can make these recommendations even more visible to your users. Simply update the +1 button code, and an inline annotation will show next to the button," Jordan said in a post on the Google+ Platform preview. “By making it easy for your users to see recommendations from people they trust, we hope it makes for a more engaging experience on your site," he added. — TJD, GMA News