+1 really counts - Larry Page ties bonuses to social media success

[Leosghost]

Larry Page has tied the staff bonuses to the success of Google's push into social media ..staff are "encouraged" ;-) to push +1 and other social media efforts from Google onto friends and family.

According to Business Insider, Chocolate Factory boss Larry Page has made 25 per cent of staff bonuses contingent on social media success in 2011. The company-wide memo was sent on Friday.

Employees – including those with no involvement in the company’s social media products – must test them and provide feedback, the memo reportedly said.

[theregister.co.uk...]

[edited by: tedster at 7:02 pm (utc) on Apr 8, 2011]
[edit reason] fix typo, add quote [/edit]

[tedster]

It's not news to me that Google wants a strong hold on social media. But so far I haven't see many Googlers making good use of social media. Sparely posted blogs and Twitter accounts that are vapid seem to be the rule.

Before they can build something that really works, they need a core group that understands what "works" actually means - not just that this shiny object you desire would generate data to play with.

[dstiles]

Good way of reducing the bonuses bill, though. :)

[walkman]

Social will threaten search too since 'likes' that can be the new PR

[crobb305]

Is there any indication that Google reads the iframed Facebook "Like" count when it is presented on a webpage? I see a site in my niche who has put up a "Like" button, but it uses the url for example.com (http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=http://example.com) 58,000+ fans. Can Google read that number? This is all foreign to me, but this page has outstanding rankings across the board.

Sorry, I know this isn't directly related to the +1, so a bit off topic, but I am scratching the surface of the social marketing stuff tonight. Just trying to get my bearings.

[mrguy]

The problem is unless they find a way to work with Facebook, it is doubtful that the current users of Facebook will abandon their friends, likes, etc with Facebook to make the switch to Google social.

Google is a little late to the party just like Microsoft came late to the search party.

[anallawalla]

Larry will achieve a highly skewed scoring that might help people in the lower Bay Area. Their friends are likely to include their own demographic, while their families would be thinly spread across the remaining segments.

I am having trouble finding Google Search results for +1 - lots of results for "1"s. Using a backslash and quotes makes no difference. :) The plus operator isn't going to help this feature at the moment.

[frontpage]

Face it Larry, you missed the boat on Facebook. No one uses Google Buzz and now this +1 will be another distraction to search.

[pitbullfan]

I agree. G should focus on what they're good at. SEARCH! Though I do like the apps and android too.

[Forbin001]

I read an article over the past few days, the guy was discussing +1, he said google was 'functional and not recreational'

[chrisv1963]

Google missed the social media boat and they will never be able to catch up with Facebook and Twitter. Google used to be good at search, but messed things up with panda. Google's future might not be too bright.