Oh, Google. Hate to do this again, but you really need to lock up these partners and get your PR in order.
A week after we got a pitch from a partner NFC company all-but-confirming that Google’s New York City event would be about their mobile payment system (Google Wallet), another partner has reached out ahead of another announcement. This time, an email seemingly confirms that Google is going to launch their +1 button for websites tomorrow.
Here’s the deal: Google reached out to us earlier to see if we’d be interested in getting some “big” news under embargo. We hate embargoes, but Google is generally good at holding them so we play ball from time to time (plus our “sometimes accept embargoes, sometimes don’t” policy keeps everyone on their toes). Anyway, we agreed to hear what Google’s news is. But they haven’t actually told us what the news is yet because our briefing isn’t until later today. So we can’t possibly know what we’re under embargo for. So we’re not under embargo.
Plus, if a partner is sending us unsolicited emails telling us what is being announced, all bets are off anyway.
In this case, Clearspring’s PR company, New Venture Communications, has written us to say that: “I understand that Google planned to reach out to you about the new Google +1 button for websites that they'll be unveiling shortly. I thought you might be interested in speaking with Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring, about the company's role as a launch partner for Google +1.”
So, we can probably expect a +1 button tomorrow with Clearspring’s AddThis tool on board to serve it up. A bit more:
The +1 button is designed to help publisher's content stand out in search results by giving users the ability to +1 content. The more chances users get to +1 content, the more likely publishers' URLs are to show up in search results with +1 annotations. This helps users highlight which results are most useful and helps publishers better engage with their audience.
You may recall that earlier this month, Google “accidentally” leaked their +1 Chrome extension via a commercial. That extension is still not available. The +1 button is slightly different in that publishers would presumably be able to embed it on their own sites. Given that this can alter the way Google Search results are served up, this is potentially a big deal.
Presumably, we’ll be under embargo shortly on all of this, so expect to hear more tomorrow. Heh. Unless a partner emails us more details first!
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