Exactly how much this is going to revolutionize search is yet to be determined ... but there is no question that in some way it will revolutionize search. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land had one of the best overviews of this new product that I have seen all day. I am not going to go into much detail about the product here because I firmly believe Danny has done a terrific enough job. If you want to learn more about every single aspect of "+1" I suggest you check out that post. The rest of this post will actually not focus on "+1" at all, instead I intend to share with you my thoughts as to how Facebook is going to react to this.
Last week I read an article that Facebook was beginning to test putting a web search bar at the top of its page (I also mentioned it on the podcast last week with Andrew). Imagine a world where you went to Facebook, saw a search bar much like Google's ... typed in a search result and got a results page that had socially-ranked results. That world is what Google has somewhat made real today and one which Bing is somewhat making real right now too (by partnering with Facebook). However, the downfall with Bing is that it lies outside of the Facebook experience. I see a future where Facebook implements this new search bar and does exactly what Google is doing now but with Facebook Likes as opposed to "+1's." In this way... Facebook has a pretty massive advantage because the Like button has been around for over a year and has had the opportunity to percolate throughout the Internet and collect vast amounts of socially relevant data.
The ball now truly lies in Facebook's court. Basically it comes down to this: Google has the power of search and Facebook has the power of social, each is trying to invade the other's turf... who will be victorious? It simply thrills me to imagine the innovations we will witness in the near future.
