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If this will be the final product of "+1", I'd agree with you that it probably won't take off.

Google, however, has been taking it methodically slow on social (and geo-location too). This is probably just a small piece of what they envision it to be. This is in contrast to the big, complicated launch of Google Wave.

I'm holding my judgement for now. I'm excited to see what Google comes up with next.

Perhaps a better comparison would be Buzz. That was a big change, rolled out to everyone at once, and an attempt at grabbing a chunk of the social web in one swoop.

Meanwhile, their repeated, incremental, segmented, non-intrusive changes to add social aspects to their searching have essentially all gone off without a hitch.

The first time I saw Buzz, I thought "Really? Good luck with that.". Prior to the privacy hubbub (I actually read the dialog), which nigh-totally tanked it. The first time I saw a tweet from a friend come up in a relevant search result, I thought "Really? Awesome." and I clicked on the link. I think this'll end up working better than their much-ignored stars on results.

Yeah, people are underestimating (and have been for a while) how useful social search is, and +1 is really just an extension of that. Although that may be because you need a Google Profile and have it linked to all your profiles to get the most use out of it.

Google had what people had been linking to on Twitter, but they didn't have what they had "liked" on Facebook. Now they have an answer to that too.

> I don't want to see the eggplant tofurduken recipe that Aunt Millie +1'd.

I agree with you mostly, but I think you're slightly missing the point in this bit. Suppose you had searched for "eggplant tofurduken recipe" and the result that Aunt Millie +1'd happened to be shown - would you appreciate knowing that she had looked at the same page and approved it? I know I would.

I think people are reading a bit too much into this as if it's now going to have a huge influence on Google's search results, taking precedence over the actual search terms. I think it's actually going to be far more incremental than that.

would you appreciate knowing that she had looked at the same page and approved it? I know I would

Why? For a topic like that, I'd trust Google's general algorithm better than any friend or relative.

And even if recommendations can improve the results, why would the recommendations of my friends be any better than those of strangers? There are a few things like music where I might care what a few particular friends think, but I wouldn't be using Google to discover things like that anyway. The only time I want to see links from my friends is when I'm taking a break and not looking for anything in particular.

If Google actually wants to become a discovery/recommendation engine, it's going to be orthogonal to search. They will have to train people to use Google in a new way -- the way they currently use Facebook. This idea that goal-seeking and passive entertainment can be merged into a single activity seems really unnatural to me.

Why? For a topic like that, I'd trust Google's general algorithm better than any friend or relative.

Google has an algorithm that effectively ranks the quality of recipes?! Neat!

If more people link to the better recipes, then yes. If not, recommendations might help but again, why is my aunt's choice more accurate than a stranger's?

Carrying on with the recipe example, there are dozens of ways to cook most recipes, which do you choose? How the variations differ may not be immediately obvious, however if you have extra information, such as your aunt's recommendation then the choice may become easier (your aunt shares your taste in cakes for example).

Social recommendation is useful when there are lots of right answers.

I'm supposed to like the same food as my friends and relatives? That's absurd. My father loves olives, I hate them. My brother hates spicy food, I love it. My mother hates cheese and milk, I like them just fine. My extended family is all meat and potatos, I'll eat food from anywhere in the world.

The things that connect me to these people just has nothing whatsoever to do with the things that I search for. I'm having a hard time thinking of any topic on which my friends and relatives can make better recommendations than the entire internet just by virtue of knowing me. The only time I would want to constrain a search to my social network is when I'm researching my social network itself.

I'm not surprised that people like the idea of social search. It sounds pleasant enough. But I have yet to see any useful example of it, or even hear a hypothetical one.

You're getting a little personal with the recipe example, I am sure there are people out there who like to cook and have family members who like to cook the same things. Crazy I know.

I suppose you could have no shared interests and opinions with anyone you know. Then I am afraid social recommendation, whether it is verbal or as part of a Google search, isn't for you.

I shall say it again for you, there are many questions where there are no wrong answers for which adding a social context will be a benefit, especially if you are someone who is in contact with people who have opinions you care about.

I frankly agree.. except that I think this might be a bit of geek-goggles. I think most of the people I know would love social proof from their immediate circle...

But yeah. Not me, man. The internets are my friends.

To a large extent tastes are regional and based on cultural background. Particularly in the case of acquired tastes such as for spicy or astringent food, there's a clear in-group/out-group bimodal distribution of preference.

Obviously individual variations exist, but the opinions of your friends and family are far from being irrelevant data.

Why do you think google offers free food to its employees?

I agree 1000% that people compartmentalize based on functionality, which is why Google shouldn't be afraid of Facebook on search (that and Facebook not having search and search being difficult).

What if I'm facebook and I'm processing >500M "likes" a day?

Could I create a reasonable search engine only using URLs people have "liked" and weight search results based on number of likes and whether people in my friends list have liked it?

You could, but I doubt many would use it. I agree with the above, that people compartmentalize, and they see Facebook as a place to see pictures of their friends and play games. They see Google as place to look up information.

There already is a very good search on Facebook and the fact that it is powered by Bing is unknown and irrelevant to 95% of the people. However it hasn't made a dent in search, so you have to seriously ask why that is. If you believe in Facebook as a search engine (I don't), the only real answer is because it's not powered by Likes. But to believe that, you have to believe that people have a major affinity for Likes, enough to throw away their old search habits in favor of it.

That'll work great if you're searching for the latest hamster-on-a-piano video. It might not work quite so well if you're searching for something with substance. Despite the hype, most people aren't especially good at uncovering original content.

A totaly agree, people don't usualy share much stufs on facebook? Have you seens around a link to a Hadoop tutorial in your news feed yet?

I think that sharing that sort of thing will be in a more targeted way, via e.g. yourpane.com. I never share links that don't appeal to everyone on Twitter or Facebook, but I send things to specific friends all the time.

I would see the fact that the walled Facebook encompasses more and more of previously searchable content as a bigger threat to Google search. Facebook that cannot be scraped for content competes for the pageviews share with the independent searchable sites, so there's less left for Google to search.

In addition to that, clicking on the "+1" button yields a "Use my information to personalize content and ads across the web." checkbox. Not sexy.

> All that said, while I dont expect this to take off, I do expect to see a "+1 THIS!" button next to the "tweet this!"/"digg this!"/"reddit this!" button on every blogspam post out there.

Agreeing with you here, not to mention I would typically +1 something after clicking on the link and reading it. This current UX has me either knowing something is worthy of a +1 before reading it or reading it, pressing the back button, then clicking the +1. A +1 THIS next to tweet/digg/like makes sense.

Beautifully said, especially about Aunt Millie. Limiting the influence to your contacts should be the default setting. If some people are more adventurous, then they can jump in.

Someone should make a +1 function with a GRE question as a captcha.

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