The +1 button allows users to share stories and articles with their network of friends. In functionality, this is similar to the ‘Like’ button from Facebook and is a significant step towards the concept of social search by Google.

When a user clicks the +1 button the user’s network – as defined by the friends on their Google Account – will be notified about it.

Sites that are interested in making use of this new facility can set it up by visiting Google’s +1 button code generator page. The button can be set up in a choice of four sizes ranging from 15 pixels to 60 pixels. Users have the option to include a counter that can indicate the number of +1s a particular page has received. The feature is currently available in 44 languages.

Generate a +1 button for your site

Although it might be too early to judge, one cannot help wondering how successful this new service will be. As of now, not too many sites have jumped to add this function to their sites.

Some of the popular sites to have already included it are TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land – all search industry and tech veterans.

However, most of the really popular blogs and websites have not yet added this service. Sites such as Business Insider, Perez Hilton and TMZ have all chosen to wait and watch whether users will pick up on this new service or if it will flop like Google’s other ventures into the social space.

Sites such as YouTube, Blogger, Google Product Search and the Android Market are expected to add +1 shortly. These are Google-owned properties, though. Out of the top 10 most popular blogs, only 3 have added the +1 button conspicuously on their pages:

Success of the +1 button will be determined largely by the general public’s adoption of this feature. If Google’s history with social networking is anything to go by, few will be holding their breath for this one!

When Bing made their announcement, Satya Nadella, the Senior VP of Online Services, informed users that their search results would be enhanced by the ‘Like’ feature on Facebook.

In other words, when users conduct a search on Bing, they will be able to see which of their Facebook friends has ‘Liked’ the product or service being searched. Results that were ‘Liked’ by these friends will also be placed at the top of the search results page as they are likely to have more value for that user.

“Liked” results on Bing let friends help users decide which movie to watch

Thus, certain search results on Bing will now be personalised for individual users. This Facebook ‘Likes’ feature will be active only when the user has signed in to a Facebook account.

Another feature which Bing has also introduced, in conjunction with Facebook, is the ability to search more easily for people. Bing will now make it possible for users to search people by name and will bring up results from Facebook that are more likely to be the searcher’s friends. Users will then be able to add that person as a friend, or send the person a message directly from the Bing search results page.

Bing social profile search

Google’s newly integrated social search feature shows users conducting a search on Google for certain trending topics an indication of the pages popularity by including the number of times the page has been shared next to the page’s title in the search results. This social shares link, however, appears only on the main search results page and not in Google News.

Google social search results indicating number of times the article was shared

When users clicks on the ‘shared by’ link they are taken to the Google real time search results page for that link, which will show the real-time sharing activity for that particular page.

Unlike the Bing feature, this is a general sharing feature and it does not specify who has shared the article. It also does not give the user any specific information from friends whose opinion the user is more likely to rely on.

Bing is gradually rolling out the social search feature, and will currently limit the roll out to users in the USA only. Google’s feature is already live in the USA and UK.

Why Google’s latest social search feature doesn’t tie-in better with their social graph and show shares from contacts within a user’s social circle is not clear. Even with social graph integration, Google’s offering would rate second-class, at best, as Microsoft has a very big advantage here owing to their relationship with Facebook.

With the number of Twitter accounts reaching 145 million, and continuing to grow, it would be difficult for users to decide which accounts they would like to follow and also to know whether or not the account they are following is genuine or not.

Bing recommending “influential” and “popular” Twitter users

Bing social will help these users by now recommending people who they think the user would be interested in following, based on the search he conducts.

When a user types a particular query, Bing will recommend three people related to the query, who would be most influential or popular with regard to that query.

Representatives of Bing have said that this facility has been “developed, to help consumers identify the most influential people to watch on Twitter based on their interests.”

The list of these recommended people is available on in the right hand panel of the Bing Social page.

The service also lets users know, whether or not the account they are following is genuine, by means of a blue and white check mark next to the name.

A similar suggestion feature has already been available on Twitter for a while now.

During a developer conference last April, the figure had been estimated at 600 million search queries per day.

A few days ago, at the Aspen Ideas festival, Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter announced that the number of search queries had gone up to 800 million per day.

That is a growth of 33% in a very short span of time, making it the fastest growing search engine at present.

Last year, Nielsen reported that Bing was the fastest growing search engine, with a growth rate of 22%. Twitter’s figures obviously appear to be much bigger than those of Bing.

However there is a catch here: Search queries on Twitter are counted quite differently from those on other search engines such as Google and Bing.

On the traditional search engines, a user actually goes to the search bar and then types in a query.

On the other hand, on Twitter, the ‘search’ mostly takes place on apps such as TweetDeck and Seesmic, where users create columns, on a topic which they need information about.

As the Twitter API receives more and more tweets containing the search query under consideration, the column gets automatically updated, every few seconds and each update is counted as a search query at Twitter. Thus the actual number of search queries is grossly over-inflated.

While CEO Evan Williams has clarified that the search queries on Twitter do vary from those on other search engines, the figures being mentioned can by themselves be quite misleading to those who do not know of the way the search queries at Twitter are counted.

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, will now be providing Facebook users with a more detailed search experience. Facebook users will now have full access to several features that are available on Bing, instead of just a few links as they previously had.

This means that Facebook users will get better search results, with the use of the new tools now available to them.

Microsoft has a 1.6% stake in Facebook, which they had bought for $240 million about two years ago allowing search integration between Bing and Facebook in the U.S. This search integration will now be available to Facebook users all over the world.

So far, Bing has been providing display ads on Facebook, but it has been mutually decided that from now on, Facebook will provide their own display ads. They can better decide what ads will be best suited tot heir website. Microsoft will, however, continue to provide search ads to Facebook and Facebook search results will of course continue to be powered exclusively by Bing.

This has been a good time for Facebook, as they will not only earn more revenue through the display ads, but they are also completing six years of social networking. They now have about 400 million users, which is a landmark in itself, and the figure has almost doubled over the last year.

It is also expected that Facebook will set up its own full-fledged webmail product, and with more and more people spending so much time on Facebook, they could soon become the top news source on the Internet.

Social search started as an experiment in Google Labs, undertaken to try and make search more social and personalised. Based on the number of sign ups to try this feature, Google has now released it in beta on their regular search results in the USA.

With this new feature, when users query Google, they will receive all the relevant results as usual. Google will additionally search for information on the subject that has been posted by the users’ contacts on their blogs and social networks and add that information as “Results from your social circle” in the search results page.

Users might give more weight to these social results in some cases, as they already know and trust the opinions of the contacts these results were based on.

The social feature has now also been implemented for Google Images. When a user does an image search, Google will include photos from the user’s contacts’ accounts on public sites like Picasa and Flickr. These results will also be shown under the heading “Results from your social circle”.

Two new links are visible alongside every set of social search results – “My Social Circle”, which shows the extended network of the user’s online contacts and how they are connected  and “My Social Content” which lists the user’s public pages that might appear on other people’s social results.

Where Social Search Stops Being Social

The last point mentioned above, though, might be the single biggest shortcoming of social search. Google relies on social information that is public. Unfortunately for them, the largest social network in the world, Facebook is largely closed off to search spiders. Public information on Facebook is sparse, at best.

Since these services are still in beta, Google probably expects to be able to improve upon them further in due course. If social search is to be truly social Google’s improvement efforts might need to focus on obtaining content from Facebook without violating user privacy.

Using Social Search

To start using social search, a user must first create a Google profile, and then add links to his / her other public online social network accounts.

Realtime search service OneRiot, which is in talks with Yahoo! to provide them with realtime search, is also tying up with mobile search engine, Taptu, to deliver realtime search services to mobile Internet users. Taptu will make use of OneRiot’s API to provide these realtime search results.

OneRiot has already started developing additional APIs that will be able to provide relevant ads on mobile handsets, thus monetising the service. The service collects realtime results from various sources such as Twitter, Digg and Facebook.

Taptu has added a new feature on it homepage, which is essentially a search engine interface compatible with mobile browsers. The homepage has a search box with options to search the Web, Images and now, ‘Buzz’, which is where the realtime search results will be provided.

Buzz search is currently available on all iPhone, iPod Touch, G1 (Android), Blackberry Storm 1, Nokia N97 and 5800 handsets. All other devices still show the old search interface, which provides the option of ‘All’, images, video and music searches.

Until now, mobile users could access realtime search results by searching for trending topics on Twitter. However, this new service will certainly be more direct and efficient.

Mobile users with compatible handsets can test the service at:

www.taptu.com

While both Google and Microsoft’s Bing, have made separate deals with just Twitter, Yahoo! is reportedly in talks with OneRiot for a much broader real time search offering.

Reuters reports that Yahoo! Inc is looking to match its rivals in providing up-to-the-minute Internet search results. The company is supposed to be running tests with several real time search partners, according to sources familiar with the matter.

According to Reuters, Yahoo! is currently holding talks with several companies to provide users with realtime search results on a trial basis. OneRiot is one of those companies.

However, there have been no official announcements on this score from either Yahoo! or OneRiot.

OneRiot, which is based in Boulder, Colorado, taps into several sources including Twitter, Digg and their 3-million-strong user base to collect real time information.

Initially, Yahoo! will provide the real time search results in a separate box at the top of the search results page, to see how their users react to this service.

While Yahoo! and Microsoft have already signed a 10 year search deal last July, it is not expected to turn operational until next year. Until then, Yahoo! needs to fend for itself. Understandably, they would not like to be left behind in the real time search race, and hence this trial with OneRiot seems like a good option to pursue.

Qi Lu said that Microsoft was in talks with Twitter to introduce real time search on Bing.

The new features due to be Launched have been labeled ‘Bing Wave 2’.

He also provided a demo of what the new search results would look like. Apparently the new service will incorporate the best features of both Bing and Twitter.

Microsoft will now have access to all of Twitter’s public feeds, and so, when a user conducts a Twitter search on Bing, they will not only see the most recent tweets and top links, but they will also have the various search features of Bing. The most recent tweets of Twitter will be constantly updated in real-time on Bing. The results will also have a retweet button, so it will be very easy for users to forward the tweets if they wish to.

Although the financial details of the deal have not been disclosed, Qi Lu did admit that this would be a non-exclusive deal, thus fuelling the rumors that Twitter is in talks with Google for a similar deal.

Bing will be able to use Twitter content and will keep track of the number of followers to each tweet, in order to determine the quality and ranking of each tweet. Spam will of course be filtered. Tags will be used to identify the trending topics and Bing will also provide the shortened URL as well as the final URL of the topic.

There has been speculation about similar deals between Bing and Facebook but nothing
has been confirmed on that score as yet.

Launching profiles is the first indication of the launch of the Yahoo! Open Strategy. It is an important landmark in Yahoo!’s hopes of turning into a big social network. In the beginning of the year, Yahoo! had shown some conceptual screenshots at CES in the month of January.

Apart from having a new look, the newly launched Yahoo! Profiles will have the ability to create “connections” or mutual friendships on the front end. The profile also has something new on its back end, which is a ‘vitality system’ to share updates. The vitality system will have the ability to run activity stream-like content for all future releases.

Although Yahoo! has already started rolling out the new profile, it may be a while before all users have access to it. The easiest way to get in is to find someone who can add you as a connection and you are instantly in.

This new profile will be integrated with other Yahoo! properties in the coming months. For example, if a user happens to give an answer to a question on Yahoo! Answers, this activity will be reflected in the user’s feed update. In the near future, the Yahoo! Mail front page will also be capable of showing what ones friends are doing.

Another important feature being added is that emails from friends or connections will be highlighted, so that users don’t waste time going through junk mail.

Those who already have a Yahoo account can see their profile at:

profiles.yahoo.com

Mail is just another important part of the newly forming social network. Search, which is the final part of Yahoo!’s open strategy has already been updated last April and might be the central focus or might end up being unimportant, depending on how the corporation’s future is determined in the coming weeks.

In order to use this new Search Together format, users will have to download the Search Together plugin for Internet Explorer 7:

research.microsoft.com/searchtogether/

Once this is done, users can add their list of friends to the buddy list in Live Messenger and then use Search Together with them. The user who first creates the session, becomes the ‘team leader’ and only that person can add more members to the group.

Search Together will be handy for users who wish to collaborate on a particular task, be they students doing a research project, or a group of friends planning a vacation together. The service will be allow synchronous as well as asynchronous collaboration.

The salient features of this new program from Microsoft will include group query history, split searching, page-level rating, commenting, automatically generated shared summaries, peek-and-follow browsing and integrated chat. Search Together will allow users to share their search results with all those who join in for a particular session, no matter at what stage they may have joined in.

A surprisingly smart feature allows members of the same Search Together group to use different search engines such as Windows Live Search, Google and Yahoo!, thereby opening up the platform to users of other search engines. This has undoubtedly been done to attract users who can’t already avail of such features on their favourite search engines, in the hope of converting them to regular Live Search users.

This program is a part of a research project on collaborative Web Search. The profile, queries and results of all users will be sent to Microsoft for research purposes.

According to Mayer, social search is a search result that is based on social interactions and connections. Social search is an old phenomenon that has been going on informally between friends and colleagues over generations – asking for a friend’s opinion or recommendation about a movie or other commodity.

Social Graphs don’t exactly bring recommendations to users. What they signify are simply the relationships between users. The Social Graph API allows application developers to utilise public connections their users have already created in other web services and makes information about public connections between people easily available and useful. Application developers can then use this publicly available information about each users’ friends network to popularise their application.

Google Social Graph API

Wild Assumptions By Google

Google’s policy hinges on the rather unfounded assumption that since the user has made information about whom they are friends with publicly available, the user will not mind Google exploiting this information to win favour with application developers who could then use it to spam social network users.

In all likelihood, if users started realising how their friends lists could be misused, they would stop making that information publicly available.

Plans For Social Search

In a recent interview with Venturebeat Google’s Marissa Mayer said that she felt that social search may be an important part of Google’s next generation of search products. In order to implement social search, Google may allow users to tag search results and then share them with friends, they may add an “others like you searched for” link alongside their search results, they may integrate social networks trends with search or they may even develop an all-new social-influenced rank systems to work alongside the current inbound-links-based PageRank system.

According to Mayer social search will allow one, to better understand ones social context. She says, “it’s hard to imagine that the search engine ten years from now isn’t advised by those things.”

Can Social Search Really Substitute Traditional Search?

We are not convinced, though. The entire premise of social search relies too much on a herd mentality among consumers. While it could work for certain aspects of certain users’ Internet and search usage, the vast majority of times people may not really care about what their friends think / see / do. At times like that, users will prefer regular search results or results that are personalised to their own tastes and history.