I’ve never been all that keen on all those little social buttons that one sees cluttering nearly every web site you visit these days. You’ve seen them – Facebook’s “Like” button, Twitter’s iconic blue bird, and the like. As a web user I find them distracting. I suppose they make a certain kind of sense – Web Site A generates revenue through advertising; the more page views/impressions and ad clicks Web Site A can muster the more money Web Site A’s owner makes – those little buttons help support this ecosystem.
But that’s another reason you haven’t seen any of those buttons on this site. My goal isn’t to make money on ads, in fact you won’t ever see ads on this site. My goal is simply to share information and experiences to whomever can benefit from it. And it’s to that end that I’ve decided to add Google’s +1 button to this site.
Adding the +1 button will hopefully give you an easy way to recommend the content you’ve read. Your friends and contacts, when logged into Google will see your recommendation when it’s most relevant — in the context of Google search results. +1’s can also be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of the content to a user’s query and may be used to determine its relevance and ranking.
In short, my goal is to share information with people who can use it. The Google +1 button strikes me as a tool that could help meet that goal.