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People that use that many icons are just after google ranking points. Cynical but true…

I’ve been wondering about this for a while. You see so many blogs that are all nascar’d up with these things.

Unique, quality content is where its at. Its a convenience to have them, but if the content is great it will get found.

Amen, bro.

Thank you for posting this. If your stuff is worth “digging”, people will digg it manually or use their frickin’ bookmarklets. It’ll annoy the rest of us to no end.

There are so many plugins that let you add all of these buttons to your site and all they do is make it look messy.

What happened to white space as part of a clean design…?

However, I feel that the Reddit icon is pretty cute.

It reminds me of the good old days when every chump with a website had a media temple and k10k icon on their site.

This is really no different, and just as stupid.

I’m not sure what worse though; the volume of the icons, or the icons themselves.

What happened to great icon design? The first time I saw many of these, I had no clue what sites they were for.

It’s like Posers 2.0

The irony, your feed for the above article had links for “Email this article, Add to del.ici.ous” (feedburner flares, I think) at the bottom! :)

Amit

Completely agree – I posted about this earlier this year.

Here’s a bit from it:

For the casual visitor to my site who may have come from a search engine, someone who doesn’t know what delicious is (and if you find that hard to believe, you’re mixing with a select group of people) an “Add to delicious” is meaningless and even sounds ridiculous.

My favorite is “make homepage!”

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and tell you why i disagree only slightly.

yes, multitudes of these icons on every site everywhere gets tired real quick – but for us at news.com.au we decided to trial a few select ones at the bottom of articles…. http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,20681563-10388,00.html

Its probably fair to say a decent % of our audience has never seen or heard of sites like digg or newsvine – so when we put these links right there we grabbed the attention of those who wouldn’t have otherwise known they could “share” the article on a service like that.

Informal number checking suggests there’s about 10 times more stories from news.com.au being posted on digg now since those buttons were placed there. (maybe 5 a week pre buttons, 50 a week immediately after buttons being placed.)

Like all good rapid web development, its an experiment, probably not perfect, & certain to change and evolve.

Thank you! I was waiting for someone to call folks out on this.

I 100 % agree. I am really specific about what actually goes on my blog, I used to have one of those “full of noise”, click this, subscribe to that, email this, digg that blogs, but the first time I printed an article out and looked at it I was horrified. Since then I’ve pretty much stripped mine down to the bare bones, probably too bare, but better than where it was before.

Jeff Atwood did a nice piece on this a while ago, called Excess Blog Flair where he likens the end product to a NASCAR vehicle.

Regardless of whether or not the icons may bring little value, I would like to address your use of Technorati’s Top 10 blogs as a valid method of determining value in this regard.

Sites like Boing Boing, PostSecret, or Kottke.org have been around for a long time and have established readership. The Huffington Post and Daily Kos (politics), Lifehacker, Engadget, Techcrunch, and Gizmodo (technology and gadgets) all have broad appeal to a wide swath of web users. These sites don’t need to use viral methods for promotion because those viral networks are already in place for them. For sites that are less well-known, the use of content aggregation such as Digg and Reddit and social bookmarking tools like del.ico.us and Ma.gnolia are a valuable means to get thier content out in front of non-established readers.

We can debate the format these linkages come in (icons, or links, etc) but we should not say that these tools will not increase the traffic to the sites that utilize them.

The “create good content and they will come” mantra, while undoubtedly helpful, smacks of the arrogance of an upper-class telling the have-nots to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. Boing Boing never had to grow its audience in today’s climate and clutter – it got a huge head start.

Someone beat me to pointing out your two links at the bottom of your Feedburner feed, you should definitely get rid of those. However, well done for posting about the annoyingness of all those buttons.

OMG I was wondering about this too! I’m so happy to see that you posted on this topic, since I was feeling a little pressured not too long ago to join the “add social networking bookmarks”-crowd too.

Don’t forget the blog equivalent, an easy way to subscribe to various blog services using, uh, an umph of buttons. Too many buttons just looks like gibberish, and generally, there won’t be enough click-throughs to substantiate the real estate (and clutter they cause) they eat up.

Well said.

Actually, it is not the posts with the highest use value, but with the highest exchange value (socially mediated assessment of worth which is divorced from utility) that are featured on digg, et al.

Do not confuse popularity for worth!!!

Regarding the central point, though, I agree.

Actually I don’t think putting up those fancy icons will help anyone. They are not at all descriptive and really confusing to many users. Still I don’t know for which sites the green square and rectangle is used in above icons…

Well said.

Dave Shea wrote about this recently, and yes, it’s just a fad that will die and end.

Here, Here! I can’t stand those stupid things.

Shoot! I just added these this afternoon.

(Though just 5, and primarily to test out the new Facebook sharing feature.)

But then, maybe it’s time for them to come off, after all. Sigh.

Please digg my comment!

It looks like you’ve got three screenshots of Sociable, the Wordpress plugin I wrote that adds these icons. (The Hitchhiker’s reference “Share and Enjoy” default heading is a dead giveaway.) I’ve already responded to the objections you raise, but the short version is that I largely agree with you that it’s really easy for them to be tacky, but they do have a measurable and valuable effect.

The next version will present icons as semi-transparent when not hovered so as to cut down on the visual noise.

I agree and disagree. I have these buttons on my blog and while I can’t say for sure that they lead to people actually bookmarking the site I can say that my stats show referrals from social bookmarking sites to have higher page views/visit than from any other types of sources (blogs, for example). So, to me that does have value in potential. I agree that begging for people to bookmark your post is a bit much, but then again the point was made that it’s not really fair to compare Technorati’s top 10 to the average blogger. As for me, I just have icons and no words.

Also, it would be interesting to debate whether or not it offers any functional support for readers. For me it doesn’t because I use Ma.gnolia’s toolbar button, but for others maybe it is helpful.

In a different light, I have these on my site expressing, in part, my support of social bookmarking. This is more of a principle issue, but it’s worth considering rather than categorically throwing these icons out the window.

oh, and others mentioned, having a delicious tag in your feed isn’t so helpful for your case!:)

I actually use the Del.icio.us icons occasionally! I’d rather have the clutter on some one else’s page than in my browser. But I agree, all the icons can be distracting. Perhaps, Peter Harkins can also implement a simple drop-down list + “Post” button.

I’ve tried a drop-down but it’s painfully unwieldy; I’ve tried various reveals but they’re too unobvious for most users.

I think I said some of this, once upon a time. That being said, Ben Edwards makes an excellent point about the arguments being employed: that lack of correlation (between success and icons) doesn’t imply lack of causation. That success has been achieved without them doesn’t mean they can’t, under some circumstances, impart some measure of that success.

Seems like we are thinking alike today. I posted an article on a similar design beast this afternoon, “Add to my RSS reader – Add to my Website clutter!“

“A post winds up at these sites because people respond to its content and quality.”

that comment is a load of crap, sorry, but if you think stuff like “The Seven Phases of Owning an iPod” (todays top Digg) is quality then you need to get out more.

emma, no one said people digg high quality, but posts that get dugg a lot have certain qualities, and among these, having stupid icons is not a top priority.

anyway, i find these icons insulting. the author basically says: “so, i figure you’re too stupid to use a bookmarklet for your aggregator of choice, but you sure have nothing better to do than search through this gaudy list for the one icon you need, and of course you’re gonna click it. i write such smart things; it’s your duty to spread my wisdom.” oh puke.

Pointless pedantry – Ebola doesn’t spread that fast, nor is it that infectious. Air born diseases like the common cold are much faster spreading. Ebola can only spread via blood contact and kills its hosts so quickly and horribly that it gets few (if any) chances to jump to another host.

Have a nice day! :)

How’s this for a bunch of those on a page? All of them per blog post to boot!

I don’t even know what services 3/4 of those icons represent. If you wanna put some social bookmarking icons on your blog posts, pick a few (3) choice services and display those icons. The reader will probably be more likely to click on one if they don’t have to sift through a list of them and find their “preferred” social bookmarking utility. Its tough on the eyes, cheapens the experience, and makes you think about other stuff (i.e. stuff other than the story posted).

You are hardly alone on your impressions. I’ll just add that whoever signs for one of those fancypants bookmarking resources is or should be smart enough to figure out how to add a site to these services on his or her own without needing these arguably redundant and tiring “visual aids”. And the icons themselves! I can consider myself lucky if I can recognize two or three out of the whole lot. Mystery meat navigation anyone? I could safely bet no one outside the bloggerati circles “gets” these.

You are hardly alone on your impressions. I’ll just add that whoever signs for one of those fancypants bookmarking resources is or should be smart enough to figure out how to add a site to these services on his or her own without needing these arguably redundant and tiring “visual aids”. And the icons themselves! I can consider myself lucky if I can recognize two or three out of the whole lot. Mystery meat navigation anyone? I could safely bet no one outside the bloggerati circles “gets” these.

These icons are just a way of reducing the pain for the users. It is terribly painful to go back to reddit or digg and vote up an article, once you have already read it. If these icons are already present then, it is real simple to show your appreciation for it.

I also like the digg/reddit counters. In many ways they are equivalent of the user rating available on amazon.

I think these icons are for the good of not only the content publisher, but also the user and not to mention digg/reddit.

Isn’t eleven pieces of flair the minimum? :P

If I used those social bookmarking/whatever sites, I guess the icons would be kind of convenient. One of the dumbest things that’s been around for years is the ‘bookmark this site’ which does a ctrl-D.

Someone said it perfectly earlier: Unique, quality content is where its at

I am guilty of using these silly little items on my own website. I originally added them in the hopes it would improve the number of links to my website. I don’t believe anyone has used them yet!

During my initial implementation of them, I was tracking my search engine rankings, and realised they affect the keyword density of the page. In other words, they’re a good excuse for keyword stuffing your website. The only place you should be using them is on a single article page though, or it really stuffs up your keyword density big time.

The Digg counters are nicer, and I think I’d be more likely to ‘vote’ for the article, than bookmark it – but only if I already had a Digg account and knew what it meant.

I’ve actually found pinging more successful for promoting my blog articles than social bookmarking.

Actually, Lifehacker’s traffic has gone through the roof since we started placing the digg button on select featured posts. We go in and out of the Technorati top 10 regularly (at number 11 right now.)

Forgive me if this sounds like horn-tooting. I bring it up only because you asked for evidence. Here it is.

That said, we add the button by hand on only one post a day, our featured original content article, the one we want to promote most heavily. I agree that all those icons on every post is pretty ugly and generally ineffective.

Hey, great suggestions! I’ve been thinking about removing these from my humor site, and now they’re gone (except for Digg). Thanks!

I might be somewhat to blame for the flurry of those icons on many blogs. I was the idea behind the WordPress Sociable plugin that everyone and their grandma now uses. However, my ideas of them have long since changed and I try to stay as far away from them as possible.

Social bookmarking, my beloved topic…

Yo you need a smoke, brah? Get off they blogs dick and chill the fuck out sonnnnnnnnn

I disagree. These icons are the basis of viral marketing. By the way you missed some icons…

The Icons Help

Damn right, digg’ed it?

So so true.

An earlier post:

“The “create good content and they will come” mantra, while undoubtedly helpful, smacks of the arrogance of an upper-class telling the have-nots to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”.”

Has it come to this? Are those of us who are capable of producing decent sites worth viewing now to be put down as elitists as well?

It seems the greatest way to draw contempt in this society is to be even a teensy bit better at something than anybody else.

Yes, because every original, well-written post automagically gets the recognition it deserves, right?

It’s just a shortcut; it’s not a cheap hack, like starting your blog’s name with a number to get to the top of blogrolls.

Every time I see a site that has a digg counter or ‘digg this’ link on its articles, my immediate thought is “Whore.”

The full package also includes the ‘AdSense / Ads by Google’ all-you-can-click-buffet

I think Ben Edwards hit the nail on the head. I can’t begin to tell you how many blogs have fantastic content, but simply no readers. It’s a over crowded, over populated arena and anyone looking for traffic needs to try everything they can. To say Joe Blow’s personal blog shouldn’t at least try to lock down some market share because the “top 10” blogs with a crapload of existing traffic don’t use icons is really elitist.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not defending those sites that throw up 20+ icons from every service in existence. Like alcohol and Meat Loaf albums, moderation is the key. However, this can be blamed on the plugins default all these things on after install.

When I started using these icons, I loaded everything up as well. Not because I wanted to, but as someone who thinks “social bookmarking” is sorta reatrded, I didn’t know what services worked well and what didn’t. So I put them up, watched my logs for a month or two and then removed what wasn’t working on my site. That left me with 4 icons.

So in my case, if people are using them, they’re going to stay up. As soon as they stop being useful, they go down.

Now, with respect to how effective they are, I’ve never made the front page of Digg, if that’s how you’re going to measure it. However, that’s really not my end goal (my little ol’ server would die in flames). Users who submit your site to whatever service/site take a personal interest in promoting your work. So even if it’s a fraction of my traffic, those users tend to stick around longer, subscribe to my feed or just post more comments. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s a win.

OMG you are soooo right! I’m going to DIGG this!

Hey, where’s your icon?

Ooooooh look dancing monkeys on youtube!! L8R

Yeah, those little icons sort of defeat the purpose – there’s that many of them that I wouldn’t bother clicking on any of them.

I just use the large diggit button – one button so it’s not confusing, and it’s quite clear what the button is for.

e.g. http://linkdonkey.blogspot.com/

Although if I’m putting the diggit button there, I suppose it would be strictly fair to put a bury it button next to it!

I wonder how many people would select the ‘bury’ in protest at the digg-whoring?

I have translated your post to Slovak language for my readers: http://www.ambience.sk/social-bookmarks-ikonky-asdf-digg-37signals

So true. I still keep Digg, delicious and reddit as textlinks. Most people that click those are newbies that did not come from SBSs, so it’s only fair to backpromote and bring them new users.

Matt,

Your logic is a bit faulty. Saying that “Zero out of Technorati’s top 10 blogs feature those icons” tells us nothing about the icons’ effectiveness. Even if the top 1,000 blogs don’t use these icons it would mean nothing. Just because the top blogs don’t use these icons doesn’t mean it doesn’t help the blogs that do. Every blog is unique and has many different reasons for their success. Social icons are only a small factor, but they may still have an effect.

It’s cargo-cult thinking. “Everyone else is posting it, so I should too.” Remember a couple years ago when everyone had those 40×10 pixel graphics all over their blogs linking to some pet product or website? (Or whatever the dimension was). It’s the same thing.

Social bookmarking is a platform, and as a platform it can help you bring traffic to your blog or website so people can learn about your products, or ideas. By using the buttons to promote it you’re actually promoting the platform.

To get a better understanding of the role of a platform in marketing you should read

http://chartreuse.wordpress.com/2006/09/18/why-paris-hilton-is-famous-or-understanding-value-in-a-post-madonna-world/

Get over the fact that it’s Paris Hilton and you dislike her for whatever reason. However let your mind be open to understanding the role of a platform

Hey, why the heck is there no button to digg this article?!

Ok, just kidding.

I see Matt´s point. But as far as I am concerned I see at least 12 buttons in almost every boingboing posting. They are placed on the right side, not at the bottom of the postings. Maybe that´s why Matt overlooked their usage in technorati´s top blog.

I think that mainly del.icio.us is the best place for the so called viral/social marketing. To me there is nothing wrong with the buttons. I like them. I wouldn´t blame a website/blog outside the top100 for using them.

Everybody starts small. Every blog had a start.

I never thought of it as a “voting” thing, just as a helpful way to bookmark something to come back to later. That’s what I use my delicious account for, anyway.

But you’re right about them being ugly. There’s gotta be a better way.

It takes 30 seconds to install the widget to put up those bookmarks. I can then help advertise the social news sites I like and use – seems like a pretty good trade-off for 30 seconds.

I can’t begin to tell you how many blogs have fantastic content, but simply no readers. It’s a over crowded, over populated arena and anyone looking for traffic needs to try everything they can.

Roger that.

So even if it’s a fraction of my traffic, those users tend to stick around longer, subscribe to my feed or just post more comments. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s a win.

Agreed.

How many “social networking” sites does one global community need? Yikes.

These buttons have a clear function on a home page of a blog as also have in a feed. In either case, the bookmarks allow a reader to bookmark a particular post without having to go to the post page. This is NOT possible with any bookmarklets or toolbars.

As was already mentioned, they are also an excellent way of showing support for social bookmarking tools and for making people aware of their existence. Del.icio.us only just passed a million users. How many people are on the web. Most internet users have never heard of social bookmarking and this is a good way to make people aware.

I do agree that they are not so useful when used as a way to shamelessly promote oneself through dig or the like. Also, the number of them on some blogs is absurd. However, a few buttons towards the top social bookmarking sites, can add functionality without too much clutter if the page already has plenty of whitespace to begin with. For example, I used them to add a little color and to add a visual barrier between each post. In other words, they are part of the design of my page and not just slapped on. I look forward to hearing responses to these points.

I haven’t read all the above responses, so if someone already said all of this, then consider this adding my support.

Great comments on both sides.

I currently use them on my blog: http://www.sparkplug9.com/bizhack/

But I’ve made the buttons small, and I’ve only used a select number. Plus, I’ve tried to integrate them into the look of the blog so that they are part of the separator between each blog post.

I don’t know which side I fall on after reading on the comments, but there’s definitely food for thought here. Thanks for bringing it up.

Sorry for not adding this above.

Someone should start a forum for bloggers to compare and critique each other’s blogs … I’d love to have feedback on how I’ve done social bookmarks, among other things, and I can’t be the only one.

Anyone remember web 1.9: “press ctrl D to make this site your homepage”

Ben, is there any evidence that these icons do result in increased traffic? And even if there is, is it worth the cost of all that Nascar’d up visual flair/noise?

Two follow-up points:

1. I think everyone agrees that 10+ (hell more than 3 or 4) of these icons is a bit ridiculous. Right now, however there are some great social bookmarking, community news aggregations sites and they are still competing for market share. Until these shake out to the one or two leaders per category, people who employ multiple icons are offering their readers more choice. And sure people can digg things on their own, but given the choice, wouldn’t you rather click an icon? Maybe having the icon their adds just 5% more to the people who would Digg and article. Don’t you think that 5% is worth it to people trying to get a greater readership?

Though at some point there is value in getting behind and supporting the one or two you feel are the best…

2. Gina and some other commenters above have pointed to instances where their traffic has increased via the use of such tools and have written that it at least gives them the chance to get in front of a large audience once and a while. I have yet to go through my data from before and after adding such icons so I cannot yet help out on that front.

That last comment was from me, doh!

Fixing this clutter is what Marc Canter and I had in mind when we created RedirectThis. Our implementation is way too raw to really be used, but I think the idea is still solid—have a simple single-purpose site which connects content providers and reblog sites.

Thank you for setting everyone in the right direction. Those little icons ARE annoying.

They are there because they come with various blog systems, so why not have them.

@ML: “I think it’s also important to acknowledge the cost of these icons when you examine any potential benefits. All that unnecessary visual noise/flair has a negative impact on readers.”

Maybe their particular readers like it. Again…myspace to most of us is absolutely awful looking / sounding. Different audiences want different things.

Good point – 100% spot on.

Although the proponents would say it’s just asking, but it is in fact begging. Begging and grovelling. What these sites need is an icon that automatically opens up your email and emails the link to everyone in your office.

It also says, if on a traditional website, ‘I bow to the gods of digg, reddit and ri.dic.u.lous as they are holy grail of web 2.0.’ Sure, the ‘social bookmarking’ sites have their place, but they attract hype way beyond their actual impact or usefulness. And hype turns readers off.

As a Reddit user, I have to say that when submitting a link to a blog post or news article I’ve stumbled across, the ONLY important thing is the quality of the content. If something I attempted to bring to the attention of others gets aggressively downmodded or suffers from derisive comments, I take it personally and feel like a bit of a fool. I’ve never clicked on one of these buttons – I mean, how arrogant can you get. It’s as if the writer were saying ‘I’m shit hot. My stuff is good enough and interesting enough to be on the front page of Reddit and Digg’, when the reality is it’s more likely to be a heap of boring cow shite.

I think Mac Night Owl might be the most I’ve seen – 24!

I’ve got them… but I have mine where you can hide or show them by clicking on a ‘social bookmarking’ link.

Anyone beat 26?

Doug Karr: You beat me to it. Adding them in a collapsible bar is probably a good compromise. Only those that know what is meant by them will show it. It also would have the benefit of not cluttering nor distracting when not needed.

“These icons are just a way of reducing the pain for the users.”

I beg you to pardon my french, but I want to say this as clearly as possible: That’s total bull. Having this superfluous eyesore under every blog post is a pain. If you catually use one of these services, finding “your” icon is a pain, especially if the web designer was a Mr./Mrs. Smartypants and revamped the icons to fit the site design (though that way it’s not as ugly to look at). Counterbalancing all this discomfort is nothing but a degree of convenience for that small, small fraction of visitors who (a) actually use one of the services offered and (b) are too stupid to use a bookmarklet. (Yes that is stupidity, not just a lack of web savvy, because when you sign up at, say, del.icio.us, they tell you exactly what to do to get the most out of it, all you have to do is read.) All in all, pain is not reduced.

The core problem here is that there are so many aggregators to choose from, and while users would benefit most from a service that takes contributions from as many places/people as possible (thus returning not only your own links for your favourite, but obscure tag, but at least a few dozen links), the aggregators rather prefer to be isolated islands that don’t interoperate and don’t agree on a standard that would allow web admins to put just ONE icon below their posts instead of many. One commenter suggested reducing the icons to 3 popular ones. This could be the most popular web-based feed-reader, the most popular collaborative news aggregator, and the most popular social bookmarking service. However, this would foster a monoculture in which everyone uses the same generic, unspecialized sites; that wouldn’t be sensible or desireable either.

Instead, I would place only one button, reflecting the site design but sporting a recognizable logo (like the “feed” icon we now have for RSS /Atom), and if you click that one button, you get the gaudy icon soup. I.e.: hide the damn stuff! Along with “vote for me” links and also “send this via this-or-that instant messenger” buttons.

Ben Darlow: “Every time I see a site that has a digg counter or ‘digg this’ link on its articles, my immediate thought is ‘Whore.’”

I think it would be nifty to automatically display a digg/reddit/whatever voting button next to an individual article after this article has already gathered a number of diggs within a reasonably short amount of time. That is, if the users of some site appreciate a particular post, the post could also appreciate them and make it easier for them to vote. Like Ben Smawfield said, there also should be an option for negative votes.

But I fully agree with Ben Darlow; a site that displays a digg button with every single item has written “attention whore” all over it. Moreover, it’s like taking a tube and connecting your arsehole to the air conditioning in your office, so whenever you let out a little fart, everyone gets to smell it.

“They are there because they come with various blog systems, so why not have them.” Yeah, and salmonella are there because they come with various poultry products, so why not have them? You, Sir, get an F in logical thinking.

“Again…myspace to most of us is absolutely awful looking / sounding. Different audiences want different things.” No. Myspace users absolutely don’t desire to use a crappy user interface that forces them to do in 10 pageviews what could be done in 2. They’re just too ignorant to realize how badly they are treated.

Doug Karr: “I’ve got them… but I have mine where you can hide or show them by clicking on a ‘social bookmarking’ link.” Doug, that’s optimal. I fully approve of that and hereby let it be known that you totally get Web 2.0 _ .

Hmm.. I bet most of my visitors don’t even know what social bookmarking is :)

btw, what do the folks at 37 signals propose then? I mean is there an alternative to those shiny looking graphics?

I would mod your post up but couldn’t find a button.

I have to agree with naser (all four times). You can’t just bash it without offering an alternative solution. You can’t simply proclaim that the icons are completely useless. There is value in their primary objective.

When I did my latest redesign last spring, I included them because I honestly thought they might be helpful to some visitors. But at this point, I think they provide much and I don’t plan to include them in the next design. If people desire that sort of functionality, they can find a Firefox Add-on that will make it easy for them or not intrude on anyone else.

Also, don’t forget that social bookmarking icons to taunt the visitors, especially those who know nothing about them. It kind of murmurs and tickles a person to click them. Once they are lured into clicking them, they are introduced to social bookmarking and the hypocritical world out there. They get involved with sites like digg or reddit where they spend the rest of their lives ranting why and how to get a story to the frontpage yada yada.

But its all good though…even evil customs deserve being learnt.

Hi, I’m Otis, and I run one of the social bookmarking sites whose icon can be found in this post’s screenshots (Simpy). I thought I’d provide the view from the perspective of somebody whose service people come to when they click on one of these things. I’ll just list things in as bullets:

1. Once upon a time it was easy to find people who mentioned your service. Now, because of these buttons, it is impossible to see who is genuinely writing about you, and who just has one of these links.

2. While it is nice to see your own service being “recognized as important”, the truth is that a lot of sites that use those buttons are small sites, and therefore bring very little traffic (eh, am I stepping on somebody’s long tail here?).

3. While those buttons are nice, people clicking on them are typically complete strangers to the service. This could be good, if you know how to describe the benefits of your service, but the truth is the vast majority of these random visitors just turn around and leave. Still, it may be a good way to make people aware of your service.

4. People who are likely to save the current page as a bookmark are not random readers and visitors, but rather the regular users of the service. And guess what? They already have those bookmarklets and extensions handy in their browsers! (Simpy’s tools are here – see, you won’t click that, because you are a random reader here, not somebody who is looking for Simpy).

I hope this sheds some light on the issue from a different point of view.

Congrats, this post (and all the comments) have swayed me into not having a bookmarking bar on my blog. I was already on the fence, but I’m thinking a sparser design and quality content is what I’d be happier producing.

You say this as you have an “Add to del.icio.us” link in your rss feed items.

LOL

Instead of using the icons, I prefer to ad text links in a subtle and non-intrusive way. The icons are pretty bad looking, but with text links you can style them exactly the way you want.

I can get behind the core message in this post, which is to rely on good content rather than technical toys to build your audience. And I think that the way the social bookmarking icons are currently presented in most cases isn’t great.

But the analysis of value and the characterization of their use is off, I think. There are plenty of elements on a page that don’t provide good ‘content’ value and are redundant. Do I need to see a feed icon on every page? Not likely, just one page would do, but having it there helps turn people on to the joy of using feeds. Likewise that the icons have probably turned a lot of people on to social bookmarking communities.

The characterization that these icons are employed selfishly and shallowly by bloggers also seems off, as the intent can easily be to simply make one’s blog work well with the reality of social bookmarking. We should be careful not to mistake our readings for someone else’s actual intentions.

I got talked into adding them at the bottom of my posts by someone in the blogosphere. I don’t even use any of the services. I don’t think they help, though at least one person has commented they like them.

I think I use the WordPress plugin mentioned above, but I’m disenfranchised with plugins. I got almost everything working and now I don’t change a thing, I’m not even up to date with WordPress itself. Everytime I try to add or change something it is a big headache, I’ve got enough headaches so I just leave the social bookmark icons where they are even if no one uses them…

I found this an interesting read but I don’t entirely agree. You hit one thing dead on, though: the way most people implement these icons is horrible.

I go into depth about how they SHOULD be implemented in a recent post in my blog as a response to this and randfish’s… response to this.

“It’s cargo-cult thinking.” – Trent

Will the social networking bookmarks die out like a fad, or are they here to stay?

Hi! That a question maybe everybody have not thought about – Why put buttons? I think it’s mainly following the wave.

Personally I’ve added them for several reasons: -For myself. (well I’ve mixed them up with other tools.) -To show which SBs I like. + By curiosity, even if there aren’t much users, to see which ones are the most used, how, why… Astonishingly – and not much people put the button, Google and del.icio.us are the most used for me. Info.

But sure above all, good content. But what is good content? That’ll change for each network. I blog as hobby and my main purpose is the pleasure of sharing information. – only reading others was a bit short.

man how I hate those little icons but why trying this when there is Blummy, I love it it’s so much easier

I only use the RSS icon…at the end o’ the day, content is king. If your site information is written well and if the site is updated often, Google will pick it up (in theory, at least..I wrote an article about Sephora’s Beauty Insider Program a week and a half ago and the article is #4).

Folks are smart enough to tag your site if they really feel like it.

Digg is for retards.

anyone can let me know how to add all these blog buttons to the website like digg, de.licio.us etc

Could all these be a japanese conspiracy? Eeek~!

Computer Reseller, Assmebler, AMC Software, Laptops, All Related To Computers

Computer Reseller, Assmebler, AMC Software, Laptops, All Related To Computers

Computer Reseller, Assmebler, AMC Software, Laptops, All Related To Computers

quit whinning! people do it becasue it is they are trying to make it convenent for poeple to bookmark there site in so doing getting them noticed . so the web is not as pretty as you like. to0o bad. but get real, woudl be nice if they where more standard, but isn’t it better that you arent tracke dinto a single bookmarking app that everyone would have to use? i.e. google or yahoo only ugggg. if i have to choose between this no options…. this is better . and in that Web2.0 spirit right?

Damn, just when I thought I was doing something useful by having these silly icons.

BTW , everyone wants their content to be read-n-spread, so don’t buy into some altruistic notion that only people who avoid pretty icons are “good”. :-)

Anyway, if it’s out of fashion to use ‘em now, I’ll check out Alex King’s new javascript popup…

CYTOMEL AND CYNOPLUS AVAILABLE FOR IMMEDIATE DELIVERY . Welcome to the Pharmamx.com Family! We invite you to visit us at www.pharmamx.com and find our great medicine prices. We provide serious and first class service to all our customers 24/7. If we don’t carry a medicine you need just let us know and we will be more than glad to assist you! To show you our gratitude for past purchases and to offer you one more reason to continue purchasing with Pharmamx.com We are offering a limited time 30% discount include on all our medicines. We will keep on giving you the best price and service in the market. Welcome and enjoy your visit to www.pharmamx.com

offers web design, development, search engine optimization and bpo services.

offers web design, development, search engine optimization and bpo services.

Yeah, but the chicklets and all the other buttons makes it easier for folks to do their social bookmarking. Besides, all the colors…weeee! :-)

Why does it have to be either-or. Of course the content is key, but doesn’t it also make sense to offer convenient links to very popular systems like Digg and Delicious.

I think the most compelling implication here is not to overwhelm the user. Personally, I vote for defaulting to the most popular 5, and then giving the user – perhaps in their profile – the ability to pick which icons (if any) they want displayed.

These icons aren’t bad, it’s just that they’re a secondary (at least) focus.

By the way, don’t you use Akismet on 37signals? It has become full of spam comments here. Nearly 30% of the page height at the moment I write this comment.