Blogging Fusion

Growth slows in key markets, growth rises for competition

To be clear, this isn't an "Is Facebook dead?" piece. Obviously Facebook is far from dead, and has become integrated in many facets of our lives, and will likely become integrated in more. In fact, just a few days ago, we ran a piece asking what we'll be using Facebook for five years from now. We talked about things like payments, e-commerce, travel, search, identity, and entertainment.

Does Facebook have a bright future, or has it seen its finest hour? Tell us what you think.

As the comments we received on that article indicate, many people think Facebook will be around for the long haul (as opposed to experiencing a MySpace-like decline), but some aren't so sure. Dave Culbertson, for example, says, "Facebook is basically AOL, part two on a larger scale. AOL was really about controlling content distribution and ecommerce. Companies such as Travelocity ended up paying millions of $$ to AOL to be 'where the people are' before they figured out that they could use the web to by-pass the AOL platform and go directly to where the most people are. Many brands jumping on the Facebook wagon will eventually realize this ? again ? and refocus on their websites. Do brands want to drive their own cars on the information highway or be stuck in the back of someone else's bus?"

Chris Smith commented, "I personally think Facebook will fail. The invasion of privacy is starting to concern everyone. Also, the figure of 700 million users is rubbish, 700 million accounts maybe, but I believe this will be less than half unique users. How many pets have accounts, businesses, people with 2 accounts. Its all publicity figures in my opinion. 1 in 10 people of the world don't have an account in my experience. Something will beat Facebook for usability and the privacy concerns in my opinion everyone will shift to that, I'd personally give Facebook 3 years max. They will end up the same way as Yahoo, who once were huge for the internet and where are they now, really?"

Well, actually Yahoo is still doing pretty well as far as the web is concerned. The company may have lost some of its luster in the search space, but it is still dominating in other areas. MySpace, for that matter (while clearly in decline), still had over 32 million unique visitors in April (Compete) while News Corp. looks to sell it. AOL, has had something of a resurgence, as it has become a more content-oriented company. Purchasing the Huffington Post was huge.

But can Facebook grow forever? According to Inside Facebook, the social network ahd 687 million total users at the beginning of June, but growth is slowing. Last year, it was common for Facebook to get 20 million new users in a month. This past April, it was 13.8 million. In May, it was even less at 11.8 million. Still a lot, but not by Facebook standards.

According to InsideFacebook, Facebook actually lost users in the US and Canada. In the US, Facebook dropped 6 million users in May, and Canada dropped 1.52 million. They also lost users in the UK and Norway, though the social network saw growth in countries like Brazil, Thailand, and Mexico.

According to Experian Hitwise, YouTube and Twitter are "eroding Facebook's dominance of social."

"In this month's search and social analysis release we saw some pretty interesting trends in our Social Networking and Forums category, including a bumper month of traffic for Twitter, extended growth for YouTube and a declining market share for Facebook," explains Hitwise UK Research Director Robin Goad.

Goad points out that YouTube is accounting for one in every five visits to all social networking sites in the UK. "Meanwhile Twitter had its biggest month of traffic ever, in part because of the super-injunction revelations, but also because the micro-blogging platform has carved a niche for itself as an excellent platform through which Internet users can share and consume news," he says. "Recent examples like the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Egypt crisis and the resurgence of the ash cloud have all been shared and discussed on Twitter."

"What's interesting is that the growth of YouTube and Twitter is coming at the expense of Facebook," he adds. "Since the beginning of 2011, Facebook's market share of visits within the Social Networks and Forums category has fallen from nearly 58% to hover around the 54% mark.

 

"Despite the drop in market share in recent months, Facebook needn't be reaching for the panic button yet," Goad continues. "Although its market share is declining slightly, Facebook still commands over half of the visits to the fastest growing category online, and having a slightly smaller proportion of an ever increasing pie is still a very healthy place to be. However, it does raise the question: has Facebook now finished its growth phase in the UK, and what will a 'stable' usage figure look like?"

In another recent article, we asked, "Is Twitter becoming the real alternative to Facebook?" Twitter has aggressively expanded its strategy since co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company, having entered the photo-uploading game and purchased popular third-party client Tweetdeck, which should mean new and interesting things for its user interface. Twitter also recently launched its "follow" button, which when placed alongside Facebook "like" buttons, could go a long way in getting people to follow brands they're interested in and increase user engagement (just one of a handful of things Twitter has done in this department just in the last few months).

There are still way more people using Facebook than there are Twitter, but Twitter's numbers are growing. A recent report from Pew Internet found that 13% of adult Internet users have used Twitter (up from 8% in November), and Twitter use is spreading to a wider range of ages. Those between the ages 25 and 44 have experienced notable adoption growth since late 2010, and when you go younger, the adoption rate climbs (the youth are the future aren't they?).

Has Facebook peaked, or have we yet to see just how powerful it will become? Share your thoughts.
 

Google's always coming out with new fangled gizmos. It's amazíng how many new, updated, or overlooked tools you can find during routine research.

Of course, not all of these are completely unknown. There are probably a few on this list that you know, and a couple you've heard of but may not know much about.

Let's look at a few of them.

1 - Google Reader Sharing

This has been around for a while, but I'm still surprised at how few of my peers are using it. 

f you have Google Buzz turned on, you'll notice when you next log into Google Reader that there's a section for "People You Follow". In this section, you can share links - or random thoughts, with all the people who are following you, or a select group, and they can share with you.

Those links also show up on your Google Buzz page. I enjoy getting suggestions from people who know and understand me, and what kind of news I like or need. I also like being able to split my audience into targeted groups of people so I can send them updates just on things they would want to know, instead of the whole fire-hose. Accessing Google profiles from within Google Reader has helped me get to know a lot of people better as well.

2 - Your Google Social Circle and Social Content

Surprisingly, lots of people are dismissive of Google's Social Search. This was understandable when the searches that turned up social results were still at the bottom of the screen. But recently, Google has integrated Social Search results into the main results, and some social signal data is reportedly already part of their algorithm. This alone makes it worth paying attention to, whatever your experience is with social media.

Besides that, there's a lot you can learn just from the Social Circle Google has discovered for you, which is derived from how you fill out your Google Profile.

For example, if you're connected to someone with a common name on Twitter, and you can't figure out which LinkedIn profile belongs to them due to a common name, Google Social Circle can help with that.  

Each person/entity is grouped with the social links that they've decided to make public on their Google Profile. True, you can also find this by searching the Google Profile directory, but if you're looking for several people at a time, this is a heaven sent timesaver.

You can also spot trends of what sites you're not on that are becoming hot, or figure out which service your friend is using that has the least noise, and thus, the highest chance of contact. The secondary connections section can also help you find new people to connect to in your favorite social media site.

3 - Google Insights for Search

Is your business seasonal? Does your favorite search term reflect this? Has the term you targeted peaked? Are there other related terms you could attain rising in popularity? You can use Google Insights for Search to research all these things. 

 

4 - Google Correlate

Google Correlate finds search patterns which correspond with real-world trends. This might not seem important at first glance, but one thing I've used it for is to help local businesses with regional chains decide what local search project to prioritize. Another is to find keyword sets I wouldn't have thought of on my own, by typing in phrases to see what other phrases they often appear within searches.

5 - Google Follow Finder

Not yet a Google Labs graduate. Plug in your name and see who Google thinks you should follow after digging into your social graph. I like to use it to find more people who are like my favorite Twitter friends.

6 - Google News Timeline

Google News Timeline can help you examine the growth of a story, track mentions of your company in the press over time, or see what's hot in different types of publications. It can even give you a link you can refer back to later, if you want to follow the progress day-to-day.

7 - Google News Near You on Google News for Mobile (On your mobile phone)

This will add a new section to the mobile version of Google News that will tell you what's going on in your immediate area. Once you browse to the Google News site on your cell phone, and share your location, you will then get a new section called "News Near You".

That section will give you news according to what's near your physical location.

Those are just a few of the new or updated tools and resources for search, news and social media that you can find in Google. Keep an eye on the Google Blog and the Google Labs site for more.

Facebook is estimated to have somewhere around 700 million users art this point. It was only 500 million when the marketing campaign for The Social Network launched last year.

How long until it reaches a billion? Leave your guess in the comments.

Facebook is seeing a great deal of growth in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, India, Columbia, Egypt, Turkey, and the UK. Facebook has become the top place for communication, photos, games, charity, and news for a lot of people already, and we've not even come closer to seeing the limit of what will be done using the social network. One of the interesting things about Facebook's growth is that the more things people are able to do with Facebook, the more it is likely to grow still. And the company hasn't even had an IPO yet.

We've seen plenty of glimpses into the future of Facebook - things that are being done on a modest scale, which will likely blow up in time (e-commerce, payments, videos, travel, etc.) As Facebook's growth continues, more businesses are going to feel comfortable using it as a platform of operation, or at least as a major component of it.

E-Commerce

We've already seen e-commerce on Facebook increase over the last year or so, with more businesses setting up storefronts on Facebook itself, but I expect this to grow much more significantly over the coming years. It will be like selling merchandise through websites used to be. At first, many businesses didn't offer their actual products through their sites, but now, most do. This will likely be the case on Facebook too, and it might not even take as long.

 

Most businesses have already recognized the benefits of at least having a Facebook Page, and given the ease of setting one up, compared to creating (and maintaining) a website, it's not hard to see why wider adoption came so quickly.

We recently ran an article by Krishna De, who discussed nine tips to increase your social commerce success:

1. Have an attractive image for your store
2. Make use of your profile photo
3. Add a customized tab on your Facebook page
4. Incentivize your Facebook fans
5. Mention your Facebook Store in a status update
6. Test the Facebook Store out yourself
7. Consider using Facebook Ads to build awareness
8. Mention the launch on your site
9. Encourage people who purchase to leave a recommendation

Identity

Identity is the key to everything Facebook does, and is a major component in every business, app, and website that associates itself with Facebook. It's all about personalization, and last year when Facebook launched its Instant Personalization features and social plugins for websites, it truly took over the web. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find a credible website that doesn't have some kind of Facebook integration, even if it's as small as simply the use of a "like" button.

Despite privacy concerns from many users, they still continue to use Facebook, and using Facebook they can log into and interact with other sites and apps, without having to create a separate account. It ups the convenience factor significantly, and reduces friction. This will continue to be key for future endeavors, and every facet of Facebook usage, whether that be paying for goods online or off, playing games and keeping your records, getting personalized news, keeping personalized music playlists, or whatever else.

Facebook faces competition from companies like Google and Twitter (more so now with Twitter's integration into Apple's iOS 5) in the area of identity, but Facebook has a huge lead here, particularly in how it relates to personalization and actual friend-related data.

Of course, you still need an email address to have a Facebook account.

Payments

It is the identity aspect of Facebook that lends it to payments. With Facebook Credits, the social network has its own currency, which one can easily envision becoming a widely adopted and acceptable form of payment given the rise of innovation in the mobile payments space for the physical world, the fact that so many sites are integrated with Facebook in the online world, and the fact that every business already wants you to "like us on Facebook".

Imagine going to McDonald's or Sears, and tapping your phone on a device at the register to pay with your Facebook Credits.

By the way, Facebook Credits will reportedly work with iTunes apps too.

Travel
 

There are 107 apps currently on Facebook listed under "Travel," and that's just internal Facebook apps - apps you access while on Facebook itself. That doesn't include the Facebook integration Travel sites all over the web are employing. Look at what Delta Airlines is doing, for example. Its Ticket Counter app lets users check in online and access their boarding pass on Facebook within 24 hours of their departure. It also lets you check flight status, view trip details, and view skymiles.

Travel is just one aspect of life where the ubiquitousness of Facebook comes in handy, as those catering to that aspect (like Delta) are able to take advantage of your Facebook ID to provide you with a helpful service.

Given Microsoft and Facebook's relationship, I wouldn't be surprised to see more Facebook and Bing Travel integrations over time either.

Search

Speaking of Bing, and its partnership with Facebook, don't be surprised to see Facebook become a much bigger part of the search market picture. Facebook has data that search engines crave already. Personalization is the name of the game, and nothing on the web can come close to delivering the kind of personalized experience Facebook can to those that use it.

We've talked at length about Facebook's potential in search in the past, so I'm not going to go on and on about it here. I'll simply give you a link or two. But suffice it to say, Facebook is very relevant to search, and search is very relevant to Facebook. It will be even more so, as more businesses and people flock to the social network.

Advertising

Businesses are already recognizing how powerful Facebook ads can be. I expect Facebook Ads to continue to grow as a more popular place for companies to advertise. The targeting based on all of the data Facebook has about users is simply too great.

Just this week, MerchantCircle put out results of a survey finding that 22% of local merchants have used Facebook ads, and two-thirds of them intend to do so again. That's as they stand now. You have to consider that Facebook is going to continue to make new features available over time, and find ways to make ads even more attractive to advertisers. It's highly unlikely that they think their work is done, and that they're not going to improve.

 

That goes for Facebook as a whole, by the way. There's no telling what Facebook and its pool of top engineering talent will come up with in time, that nobody's even considered yet. Look at everything Google's done in the last decade. Who knows what Facebook will have its hands in another ten years. By the way, much of that top talent has come from Google.

Entertainment

Obviously games are already an enormous part of Facebook use for a lot of people. One can't help but wonder if it has even played a part in the cancellation of certain soap operas. Movies and music may be poised to make up an even greater part of the puzzle as well.

As you may know, Warner Bros. has already been testing Facebook movie rentals. You go to a fan page for a movie, and then, you can rent the movie from right there. It's not at all hard to imagine this becoming commonplace in the industry.

Facebook has also been talking with various music services, according to reports. The product of these talks is rumored to be a tab/widget that would display a user's most-played songs and provide an easy way for friends to hear them. People are already sharing music on Facebook all the time, whether that be through a YouTube video, a SoundCloud file, or other formats, and bands are already connecting with fans through their Pages.

Musicians are even charging Facebook credits for on-demand concert streams.

News

People are already getting a lot of their news from Facebook, and Facebook has been placing more emphasis on this side of things itself. If you're doing all of these other things with your Facebook account, it only makes sense that you would get at least some of your news through this venue as well, by "liking" publications' Pages, which share links and notes about stories, and through posts that Friends find worth passing on (including through Facebook's social plugins - like the "like" button or the newer "send" button)

A couple months ago, Facebook announced the launch of new journalist resources and a series of events for journalists to come together and find new ways to better harness the social network for their craft. Of course Facebook has played a significant role in creating the news as well (see recent revolutions).

Acquisitions

Looking at Facebook's list of recent acquisitions can give us hints as to what the company might be up to, though as they are often geared toward talent rather than product, we can only speculate until we see results. Recent acquisitions from Facebook include:

- Drop.io (file hosting and sharing)
- Rel8tion (mobile advertising)
- Beluga (group messaging)
- Snaptu (mobile app development)
- DayTurn (infographics)
- Sofa (mac apps)

What Will We be Using Facebook For in Five Years?

This is where I'd like to call upon feedback from our readers. I'm sure I've barely scraped the surface of what the future truly holds for this increasingly powerful company. I want to hear some ideas from you about what you think we're in for. So, I ask you: what will people be using Facebook for five years from now, that they aren't already using it for? What would you like to see Facebook do in the future that it doesn't already do? What would you like to see it stop doing? Comment here.

The other day while watching a training video created by another marketer, I missed the whole beginning of the program. The guy stood facing the camera, lecturing in a friendly manner and gesturing smoothly at some props behind him. I couldn't take in his words because my mind was shouting, "That's something I couldn't ever do!"

In truth, I probably could do it, but only with weeks of practice. And I probably wouldn't feel happy about the effort. Creating a marketing piece with the camera focused on my face much or all of the time feels uncomfortably egotistical to me as an introvert. I've heard similar sentiments from introverted clients who get freaked out about video and TV but enjoy performing on radio and can manage public speaking, where they focus on the experience of their audience. 

Yet does that mean introverts can't comfortably use video as a promotional tool?

Not at all.

Appearing as a talking head is only one method of using video, and it's probably the very most challenging video mode for introverts. Here are five alternate ideas for producing video content without forcing yourself into activities that feel alien and frightening.

1. How-To Videos

If you're good with your hands or have a physical skill to demonstrate, have someone shoot video of you showing the step-by-step performance of what you know how to do. For instance, a video of how to knit a cable stitch is going to focus on your hands, not your face, which makes the filming much less intimidating. Likewise, when you demonstrate a walking meditation, you naturally focus on your posture and pace, rather than the camera. Keep in mind that you can either describe the steps verbally as you perform them or add your spoken commentary to the video later.  

2. Storytelling Videos

Here you have an opinion to share or a story to tell, and you illustrate it with video scenes edited together. For example, I created a popular 2 1/2 minute YouTube video about my remote-living Internet marketing lifestyle by first writing the script, then having a fríend shoot planned-out footage illustrating what I was talking about. A scene near the beginning showed me sweeping snow off the satellite dish through which I connected to the Internet. Another pictured me looking around from the dock overlooking our lake. My friend matched the content in my recorded audio to the scene changes. This was painless for me to create because I didn't ever have to speak directly to the camera. You might think of this video option either as a music video with speaking replacing the music or as an illustrated audio commentary of the sort they often feature on U.S. public radio. 

 

3. Narrated Slide Shows

My next video, to promote my vacatíon rental condo in Maui, is going to orchestrate still photographs, instead of video footage, while my voice offers lively remarks and descriptions of the island lifestyle. If you're a consultant, you could use this technique to show photographs of yourself helping clients or of your clients' successes while you explain your services in the voiceover.

4. Interviews

Most people feel less self-conscious when they're answering someone's questions rather than reciting memorized text or extemporaneously talking to the camera. Knowing that you can reshoot an answer where you flubbed it is a huge comfort, too. So consider a Q&A video format in which you explain important points or provide background about yourself or your company. You might decide to leave the questions in the video or edit them out and weave together your answers on their own.

5. Screencasts

Here you go off camera altogether. A screencast, also called a video screen capture, shows the viewer what a process looks like on a computer screen as it proceeds step by step, with the accompaniment of a verbal soundtrack. You can also create a screencast by compiling a Powerpoint presentation and merging it with an audio voice recording. For example, some introverted experts read their articles out loud while their Powerpoint illustrates the content.

Whichever alternate video format you choose, keep it short. Less than three minutes is ideal for video posted online. Edit it so it looks professional, as we all tend to measure video quality by broadcast TV standards. End your video piece with a call to action - what you want viewers to do next, such as opt into your newsletter or contact you for an introductory meeting. Finally, post your creation on sites like YouTube as well as your own web site. And give yourself a big pat on the back for completing something many introverts would not dare to do!  

More Here

"Don't bother thinking about it [PageRank]. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's useful for you as a site owner. If you're looking for metrics, we'd encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business." (Source: Google Webmaster Central FAQ)

 

 

This week, Google introduced Google Wallet, which could either be representative of the future of how we pay for things and organize our daily lives or a massive bust. Time will tell. In the meantime, we've compiled a great deal of information about the product, and what's known about it before its true launch.

As you may know, the Google +1 button has become available for webmasters, site owners and publishers to include on their content, and many rushed right in to do just that. Why not? It impacts your site's visibility in search, and with the continuously changing Google algorithm, anything to help in that department is welcome to most sites.

Have you put the Google +1 button on your site? Let us know.

We've compiled a list of noteworthy tidbits about the button, and things that we think any site interested in using it should know.

1. The +1 button will influence search rankings. Here is the exact quote from Google's David Byttow, from when the feature was first announced: "We'll also start to look at +1's as one of the many signals we use to determine a page's relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality over time."

2. When a user searches, while signed in, their search result snippets may be annotated with the names of their connections who have "+1'd" the page. When none of the user's connections have +1'd a page, the snippet may display the aggregate number of +1's the page has received.

3. Google says publishers could see "more, and better qualified traffic coming from Google" as potential visitors see recommendations from friends and contacts beneath their search results

4. Google calls the +1 button "shorthand for 'this is pretty cool' or 'you should check this out'. 

5. One a user clicks the button, a link to the content appears under the +1's tab on the user's Google Profile.

6. Google suggests clicking the button when you "like, agree with, or want to recommend" something to others.

7. The +1 Button is not the same as Google Buzz, though there are similarities. They both appear on your Google Profile under different tabs, but +1's don't allow for comments (at least yet. I would not be surprised to see Buzz's functionality get rolled into +1 eventually).

8. +1's are public by default. Google may show them to any signed-in user who has a social connection to one. Users can choose not to have them displayed publicly on their Google Profile, however.

9. There are different sizes and styles of the button that you can use on your site.

10. The button is even more customizable if you want to get more technical. The API documentation can be found here: http://code.google.com/apis/+1button/

11. When a user clicks on the +1 button it applies to the URL of the page they're on.

12. Still, multiple buttons can be placed on a single page that all +1 different URLs (refer to the above documentation).

13. While Google suggests you use the button where you think they'll be most effective in terms of placement around your content, the company recommends above the fold, near the title of the page, and close to sharing links. Google also says it can be effective if you put it at the end of an article as well as the beginning.

14. By placing the "script" tag at the bottom of the document, just before the body close tag, Google says you may improve loading speed of the page (which is another factor Google takes into account in terms of ranking).

15. If you try to +1 a private URL, it won't work, according to Google.

16. You have to be logged into a Google account for the button to work.

17. While everyone can see aggregate annotations, signed in users can also see personalized annotations from people in their Gmail/Google Talk Chat list, My Contacts group in Google Contacts, and people they're following in Google Reader and Google Buzz. 

18. Google points to these canonicalization strategies to ensure the +1s "apply as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results." http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066

19. The button is supported in 44 languages (though the annotations only appear in the English language Google.com search results for the time being).

20. The button will be seen in the Android Market, Blogger blogs, Product Search, and YouTube, in addition to any other sites that add them.

21. A lot of sites have already replaced the Google Buzz button on content pages with the +1 button

22. If you have a Blogger blog, you can add the button by going to Design > Page Elements on the dashboard, finding the "Blog posts" area, clicking edit, and selecting the "Show Share Buttons" options, where you should find the +1 button as an option.

23. The +1 Button will be available on YouTube watch pages under the "share" feature. Consider how valuable YouTube can already be to SEO, and take then take into consideration the search implications of the +1 button.

24. If you're signed into your Google account, Google will show you +1 annotations from your Google contacts on YouTube search results.

25. Google says adding +1 buttons to your pages can help your ads stand out on Google. "By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search ads and organic results might appear with +1 annotations more often. This could lead to more--and better qualified--traffic to your site," the company says.

26. The +1 button will appear next to the headline on search ads. Personalized annotations will appear beneath the Display URL.

27. Publishers can get updates about the button by joining this group.

28. Google may crawl or re-crawl pages with the button, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click.

29. Google has strict policies for publishers that it says it will use (along with the Google ToS) to govern use of the +1 button. Here are these policies in their entirety:

Publishers may not sell or transmit to others any data about a user related to the user's use of the +1 Button. For the avoidance of doubt, this prohibition includes, but is not limited to, any use of pixels, cookies, or other methods to recognize users' clicks on the +1 Button, the data of which is then disclosed, sold, or otherwise shared with other parties.

Publishers may not attempt to discover the identity of a +1 Button user unless the user consents to share his or her identity with the Publisher via a Google-approved authorization procedure. This prohibition includes identifying users by correlating +1 Button reporting data from Google with Publisher data.
Publishers may not alter or obfuscate the +1 Button, and Publishers may not associate the +1 Button with advertising content, such as putting the +1 Button on or adjacent to an ad, unless authorized to do so by Google.

Publishers may not direct users to click the +1 Button for purposes of misleading users. Publishers should not promote prizes, monies, or monetary equivalents in exchange for +1 Button clicks. For the avoidance of doubt, Publishers can direct users to the +1 Button to enable content and functionality for users and their social connections. When Publishers direct users to the +1 Button, the +1 action must be related to the Publishers' content and the content or functionality must be available for both the visitor and their social connections.

Google may analyze Publishers' use of the +1 Button, including to ensure Publishers' compliance with these policies and to facilitate Google's development of the +1 Button. By using the +1 Button, Publishers give Google permission to utilize an automated software program (often called a "web crawler") to retrieve and analyze websites associated with the +1 Button.  

30. The button is not available on mobile search results yet, though users may still be able to see the buttons on your pages.

31. According to Search Engine Land, while they may still be a while away, Google will launch analytics for the button, to show webmasters info on geography, demographics, content, and search impact. Apparently Google is working with launch partners to make sure reporting is accurate before they offer it on a wider scale.

If you want the code for the button to add to your site, you can get it here.