built upon the earlier "Social Search" feature which indexes content shared or published by authors; "Social Search", however, relied partly upon returns from non-Google services, such as Twitter and Flickr. As of July 2011, tweets were no longer shown due to the expiration of Google's contract with Twitter. Privacy The privacy setting allowed users to disclose certain information to the circles of their choice. Users could also see their profile visitors. +1 button Google+ featured a "+1 button" which allowed people to recommend sites and posts, similar in use to Facebook's Like button. Google+ Pages Google+ Pages was released on November 7, 2011 to all users, allowing businesses to connect with fans. Google+ Badges was quietly introduced to select enterprises beginning on November 9, 2011, and officially released to the public on November 16. Badges were sidebar widgets which embed "Add to Circles" buttons and drop-down lists into off-site websites and blogs, similar to Facebook's Like Box widgets. This was officially treated by Google as a replacement for the older Google Friend Connect and its widgets, and GFC was announced by Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Hölzle on November 23, 2011, as scheduled to be retired by March 12, 2012, on all non-Blogger sites in favor of Google+ Page Badges. Google+ Views was introduced on April 1, 2014. It featured a "view counter", which is displayed on every user's profile page. The view counter showed the number of times the user's content had been seen by others, including photos, posts, and profile page. This feature was later removed in favor of an insights feature. Communities Google+ Communities was released on December 6, 2012. This allowed users to create ongoing conversations about particular topics. Events Events allowed users to invite other people to share photos and media in real time. This was removed from Google+ as part of the November 2015 redesign, but later added back in a different location. Events were later included on the user's profile. Discover The Discover page showed trending posts and articles on Google+ and around the web. Google Local On June 11, 2014, Google combined Google Places and Google+ Local Business Pages with the Google My Business product. The product used the interface of Google+ but had many more features, including insights and analytics. On May 30, 2012, Google Places was replaced by Google+ Local, which integrated directly with the Google+ service to allow