An upvote system?

so i've just noticed there's a button to "publicly + 1" articles. How long has this been there? is it kind of like the upvote system on reddit/digg?

(the button's top left, under where it says "Thread:")

 

I've noticed it too. Been waiting for someone to explain what it does to me

 

Its to do with Google+ apparently. Something new that's supposed to be similar to Facebook.

It's like when you've got like buttons on sites outside of facebook.

 

It's a Google based recommendation system.

Click it, login into Google account and it's recommended to people you know.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/+1/button/

 

Have absolutely no interest in any of these miserable 'sharing' features that the web goliaths are creaming themselves over lately. If something is worth showing somebody about I'd just give them the direct link sooner than I would 'drag to share', 'click to like', 'bookmark with the following sites' or any of that nonsense. But then I'm a bit of an old fashioned fart so maybe that's just me.

 

i dont need to tell google what i like, it probably knows everything about me anyway

 

It's just google's version of liking a page/posting that link.

 

google plus should stop rolling out features to the public until the full thing is available to everyone

 

This +1 thing was released months in advance of google plus, and it's not exactly hard to get into google plus, which already has over 10m people on it.