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My main problem is actually the name itself. Facebook's "like" button works so well because it gives people a simple, self-explanatory button to press if they

My main problem is actually the name itself. Facebook's "like" button works so well because it gives people a simple, self-explanatory button to press if they like something. Never mind the stuff it does behind the scenes, most people think if they click a "like" button, their friends will know they like it. It promotes self-reinforcing behaviour. +1 doesn't do that. It's not immediately apparent what it's for, and it offers no incentive for use without knowing what it is. The icon itself doesn't tell you anything. "What is it, some kind of movie?" A simple thumbs up would have been much simpler, much more intuitive, and likely to gain greater traction. A simple note under the search bar saying, "Find what you were looking for? Give it the thumbs up and help us deliver better results" would likely have led to much higher usage. The average user doesn't need to know what it's being used for. Calling it "social" doesn't help in this context, because nobody thinks of social when they think of Google. Even telling people it would be shared with their email contacts is a terrible idea - email is for work and family, not messing around with friends. Just say that it's to help improve Search and reduce spam, and people will go along with it.

ChuckMcM 16y ago
perhaps its simply endemic. Internally to Google (which presumably arose outside of Google) was the notion that folks who agreed would simply put +1 in their email. Some tools (especially code review tools) could parse that and agreeable phrases like "looks good to me" as the writers approval of the original message. Sort of an in-band upvote if you want an HN translation. When I read about it this morning I thought to myself "well that makes sense to 'me' but I wonder if it will be opaque to folks without that context?" Sounds like for some people it is. If you suggest to someone (at/formerly at) Google a course of action and they reply 'lgtm' that means "Ok" :-)
- logic 16y ago
  The Apache lists, for as long as I can remember, used +1/-1/-0/+0/etc. as a means of informally expressing approval, as well as explicitly registering a vote from committers. http://httpd.apache.org/dev/voting.html http://httpd.apache.org/dev/voting.html That was the first place I'd seen it appear, although I assume it predates them.
  - lemming 16y ago
    I think the problem is that this will only make sense to geeks. This is the problem with a lot of Google's UI design, it's not designed for normal people and is often confusing for them.

ChuckMcM 16y ago

perhaps its simply endemic. Internally to Google (which presumably arose outside of Google) was the notion that folks who agreed would simply put +1 in their email. Some tools (especially code review tools) could parse that and agreeable phrases like "looks good to me" as the writers approval of the original message. Sort of an in-band upvote if you want an HN translation. When I read about it this morning I thought to myself "well that makes sense to 'me' but I wonder if it will be opaque to folks without that context?" Sounds like for some people it is. If you suggest to someone (at/formerly at) Google a course of action and they reply 'lgtm' that means "Ok" :-)

logic 16y ago
The Apache lists, for as long as I can remember, used +1/-1/-0/+0/etc. as a means of informally expressing approval, as well as explicitly registering a vote from committers. http://httpd.apache.org/dev/voting.html http://httpd.apache.org/dev/voting.html That was the first place I'd seen it appear, although I assume it predates them.
- lemming 16y ago
  I think the problem is that this will only make sense to geeks. This is the problem with a lot of Google's UI design, it's not designed for normal people and is often confusing for them.