Google+1 May Face The Same Challenges As Facebook 'Like'

PowerReviews and BazaarVoice, which are the names behind many customer review and ratings systems, are adding the Google +1 button to their feature suite. The partnership is giving Google an amazing distribution platform -- PowerReviews alone catalogs more than 35 million products and 5,500 branded products. Jockey is among the first PowerReviews brands to integrate the +1 button. While it's nice to see the +1 option in review boxes as a choice of expression, this initiative makes me think +1 may face some of the same challenges as the 'like' button, in terms of user privacy: 

Will consumers want to show to their whole Google network what they used and reviewed? Giving a camisole a +1 on Jockey.com connects my personal shopping habits with my email, blog, Google+ network, YouTube and Adsense accounts. This might be a bit too-much-information. 

Will consumers give a +1, in addition to using a 5-star system? Within the PowerReviews system, consumers still have regular features to rate a product on a star scale and write reviews. Clicking on the +1 would mean I want to make sure everyone hears about what I have to say. What percentage of consumers would go through the extra step? Will we see a correlation between types of reviews, average star ratings and +1's?

How does the +1 system benefit the ad consumer? If I am sharing so much information about my likes with a giant advertising platform, will I get more targeted, useful ads? How would this type of information matching make consumers feel about using the +1 button or clicking through online ads?

A substantial group of people use the +1 button, across 1 million+ sites. Coupled with consumer review content, Google will be collecting considerable data on the most outspoken word of mouth agents who regularly publish their opinions online. 

Posted via email from dotwom's posterous

Translating Facebook Likes Into Impressions

I participated in an informal research experiment conducted by our friends at Keller Fay Group. The participants got an email invitation from Ed Keller on late Friday afternoon, asking us to post this simple statement on our Facebook Walls. "Hi friends. Please help me with a research project. If you see this, please click 'like' on my status. It's that simple. Thanks." We were to report back to Ed in 48 hours with the percentage of our friends who actually clicked through. 

Mine hovers around 10 percent. Not bad, considering I am connected to 428 friends, family members and colleagues through Facebook. The one qualitative finding that didn't surprise me was who commented and who got into a conversation under this comment. I had six comments from four unique users - all of whom are what I would call 'intensive' Facebook users and natural conversationalists. I know that their offline networks are pretty broad as well. 

But if you go from 428 to four to have true engagement, then maybe we should not equate the number of friends to actual impressions on a wall post. Of course, we have to consider that my message was not anything counter intuitive or newsworthy. It was a simple (perhaps questionable) call to action that got posted at a time when most people were drifting off of work. In a more formal rendition of this experiment, I would also vary time, quality and content of the message. That would yield pretty interesting results. I am sure not all wall posts are equal.  

Posted via email from dotwom's posterous