Houch with you living down there FB would be a great way to stay in touch with family/friends that are still up here. I even found my biological Mum (I'm adopted) on there about 3 years ago.
No, that's the +1 button, part of Google+ but not the whole thing.
It's quite a clever take as it replaces the functionality of blogs, Twitter and FB in one site. I'm waiting on my invite, but I like it a lot. Fastest growing social networking site ever, but as always it'll rely on people like your mum using it when it goes live. I think FB has too much momentum now, but I'll probably use G+ as a blog and Twitter replacement.