Mountain View, California — Engrossed amid the hysteria over Google’s powerful new Drive cloud-storage service, the Mountain View tech giant on Tuesday crowned its Google+ with “Share” button.
Like Facebook’s share buttons, the new red and white button can be embedded on your website or blog and will allow website operators to more easily encourage visitors to spread content among connections on Google’s social network. It is the latest move in integrating the social network with content across the web. The Share button joins the already existing +1 button, which allows Google+ members to indicate that they–for lack of a better term–like a page or an article.
“When your visitors come across something interesting on your site, sometimes you want to encourage a simple endorsement (like +1),” Google+ Product Manager Rick Borovoy wrote in a blog post today introducing the new feature. “Other times, however, you want to help visitors share with their friends, right away. Today’s new Google+ Share button lets you do just that.”
This new full-fledged “Share” button for Google+ is distinct from the +1 button, which at this point seems like a drop in the proverbial bucket that is the larger Google+ social system.
Interestingly, the Google+ share button is very much identical to the button most of us content creators already use for Facebook and Twitter sharing. And now you will have the option to share content from sites that have implemented the feature, including commentary on what you are passing along.
In addition, the thing that differentiate the Google+ share button (and Google+ itself) is that you can click to share multiple times with a variety of people and audiences.
Intelligently, Google decided to make the button change color before and after sharing content. Before, it is gray, and once the sharing is done, it turns red–Here is what the Google+ share button will look like before you click on it:
Also, there is a share count along with some highlighted friends who have already shared the same page. Once you click the button, you have the option of sharing a page with specific people or Circles in your network, besides, you will also be able to specify how you want your share to go down. You can share the same page repeatedly or in different contexts with different segments of their network.
Well! Have a site that needs a bit of Google+ sharing action going on? Interested users can head over to the Google Developers page to grab the code right away. Enjoy!