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Google+ users can now share Webpages they like by clicking the now ubiquitous Google +1 button, which exists on more than 1 million Websites and gets more than 4 billion daily views, double from last month.
The +1 button is Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) version of Facebook’s Like button. In June, Google made the tool available to publishers, who can add it to their Websites with a few lines of code. However, the +1 button had little purpose because it posed no connective tissue to other Web services.
Google+ is the company’s new social network, allowing users to connect with friends, family, colleagues and strangers through Circles, a social construct designed to promote massive sharing by letting anyone follow anyone else in the network.
After enabling sharing separately, Google+ and +1 now enable sharing together, according to Vic Gundotra, a senior vice president of engineering for Google.
Essentially, Google+ users who click a +1 button will be able to blast that Webpage or ad they like to anyone they want within their Google+ Circles. The idea is to facilitate even more sharing than usual.
“Clicking the +1 button is a great way to highlight content for others when they search on Google,” Gundotra said. “But sometimes you want to start a conversation right away-at least with certain groups of friends. So 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.”
Also, when users click the +1 button to share, they will see snippets of links, images and descriptions in the sharebox, similar to what they would see when they share content in Google+. Publishers will be able to customize their +snippets when these features become available over the next weeek worldwide.
Users hungry to try the new +1/Google+ integrations can test it by heading to the Platform Preview page and signing up to test the latest Google+ features.
The integration between Google+ and +1 is the latest in a few integrations between Google’s new social network and its existing products. Google is already indexing Google+ posts on Google.com, and enabling the conduction of Google Hangouts video chat sessions from YouTube.
Google is also enabling sharing between Google+ and Gmail’s people widget, and letting Google Books users share books they like to read with fellow users on Google+.