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Not wanting to be left out of the social following fun, Twitter and Google have both announced their own “social buttons” today.  Actually, the seemingly synchronized event happened by accident after Google’s “+1″ button was leaked to TechCrunch.  Their official announcement is expected tomorrow, and the well known AddThis tool will be the first integrated partner to serve it up.

Because of the early release, we don’t actually know a whole lot about Google’s button, but you can bet you’ll be seeing this social metric as part of your search results in the near future.

Twitters “Follow” button was officially released by the company today with 50 major websites integrating the button to coincide with the launch.  I figured this was part of a beta test, but it looks like anybody can go and configure their own follow button right now.  Before you had to leave the site you were on to view their twitter page, and then click the follow button.  With this button, you can follow without ever leaving the page you’re on. Here is a preview of the follow button on IMDB.

Neither of these buttons were very surprising, especially since both companies already utilize similar buttons for other features like “Google Buzz” and retweeting stories on Twitter with the click of your mouse.  Twitters follow button is a handy feature, but the “Google +1″ button could be a game changer depending on how much statistical power those votes wield in the search algorithms.  In the beginning however, Google most likely won’t put much, if any, stock in the rankings as they work out the kinks and try to secure the system against webmasters trying to game the system.

So now we have two more buttons added to an already huge lineup of social media buttons that you see crammed onto pages all around the web.  These buttons will probably make their way onto most websites because of their massive following, but at some point you have to think older buttons like Digg and Delicious will be pushed aside as designers start to run out of room and users start to get button blindness™.  As you’ll notice, I used the trademark symbol on the term “button blindess” because I just made it up and now I OFFICALLY own it.  If you’d like to use it, speak to my lawyers :)