Over the past few months, myriad sites across the web (including Google News) have adopted the +1 button to help start conversations. But there hasn’t been an easy way for signed-in users to see what news articles your friends are enjoying -- until now.

Starting today, the Spotlight section will sometimes include articles that your Gmail contacts and people in your Google+ circles have publicly +1’d. You can see their profile pictures and click through to their Google+ profiles, just like on Social Search. And of course you can +1 the stories too, expressing your opinion and optionally sharing with your circles.

The battle for the eyeballs of social media network users is intensifying, with Google launching a demo version of 'Google+' (called Google Plus), the search engine giant's renewed attempt to take on Facebook in the social networking arena.

“This is just the beginning...We're just getting warmed up...launching what we call a field trial period, an invitation-only approach to help smooth out the rough edges,” said an official Google post on the demo site.