Plus 1 (+1).. me too...

Google +1, you must have already known about it by now. If you haven't read/heard about it much or at all then, well, it's google's take on socializing search and its ecosystem. Most of the blogshere say that its google's counter on facebook and in a way it is. Facebook is slowly becoming the entry to web or widow to the web world. Friends, links, likes, search (which for now is not there), shopping, movies, games, etc, you name it and its all there. As far as i could rememer thats what the world wide web was and slowly facebook is become the web world wide for a lot of people. Search is the only thing that Facebook doesn't do well even with its own data generated by its own users. It gives these data to Bing for them to make some meaning out of it in search terms.

Google, in the long term, is looking to socialized the search. This is an opt in "experiment" for now, where you have to make you profile public. Did you even know google profile existed? Anyway, if you optin for the experiment, you'll then see +1 buttons near search results and ads too. So, you can not only like links in search result but also ads in the page. Your likes are analysed by Google and will try to show you results that you trusted before or the one that you +1'ed, whenever you search next time. This is a case of for you by you, and so, not yet socialized.

Socializing is the next step, for now its personalization. And, i think Google is doing the right thing. One must know how to personalize before one can socialize. With the multiple failures it had with social connections, I believe they have now understood that being a search engine, without understanding a user's personality, it is very difficult to understand its social connections. And once its understands personalities, to connect these personalities (in search results) is much better way of gradual socialization of search results.

Well, that was about search and the same is true for ads. And, ads are what makes Google those billions of dollars and to make ads social, what else can be better than that. I like puma shoes and I bought them once. Google knows about it. There's a Puma ad for a shop near me or an online shop. I click on it immediately (most likely) and may buy one if price is right or the shoe is good enough to shell out some money. Cha-chin and that's money for Google and its ad partner and more trust in Google to display its ads on, rather than go to some rival (Facebook) for ads.

Google is getting into social search & ads, and before that, its trying at personalized search & ads, which I think is a very smart move. Its still a long long way from where I can see what Google can do but only time will tell whether we'll like socializing our search results and how it'll affect our search habbits.