I think there are lots of interesting things to ponder about Brindley Beach asking for a +1 nod on Facebook.
- (obvious) Facebook is openly being used as a platform
to promote a Google product - Brindley is publicly soliciting a positive search engine
signal – a request for social proof - if this works – and if +1 really matters – then this is super easy to game right now
This certainly isn’t the same as paying for links. There’s no promise of compensation in any way. My guess is that offering an award for a +1 (cough.. cough..) would be against mighty G’s guidelines – but this isn’t the case.
Now between the Google toolbar, chrome, and pages that use Google Analytics there are cases where Google can walk bat the cat and figure things out. But not always.