

Ask HN: Do your users actually use those social bookmarking icons (ShareThis/AddThis)? - villageidiot

I don't use them so I find it hard to imagine that others do. Has anyone found these to be a useful addition to the their site (based on tracking statistics)?
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patio11
On my non-technical site, I got about 1 add in the last 100,000 page views.
Its mostly a waste of screen space and user attention.

However, when I publish pillar reference content aimed at geeks, the simple
Delicious button which shows number of people who already added it performs
VERY well for me. (Incidentally: that social proof is totally missing with
ShareThis/AddThis/etc. I wish they would incorporate it.)

Delicious also generates long term traffic, whereas most of the other social
sites do not.

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villageidiot
That's really good information. Thanks. I may try the Delicious button for a
while and see how that works.

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patio11
I'd suggest reserving it for pillar content. When I say pillar content, I mean
"If I had a CV, this article would be on it." Otherwise you encourage
blindness of it in your users. (A major problem with ShareThis, etc.)

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villageidiot
Yeah, I see what you mean about blindness.

And just so we're on the same page, you're talking about this, right:

<http://delicious.com/help/savebuttons>

I just added it to my site but I don't see any option for displaying the
statistics you were referring to - i.e. how many people have bookmarked
something with it (except on the delicious website, of course). Maybe you're
using a different button?

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patio11
I'm using the button you can see way at the bottom of this page, which is
right below instructions for implementing it. (Copy/paste a line of Javascript
as I recall.)

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm>

~~~
villageidiot
Ah. Cool. Thanks a million.

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noodle
i use bookmarklets. however, the occasional social bookmarking icon will make
me think to share the thing using my bookmarklets.

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villageidiot
that's an argument i've heard in favor of them (serves as a reminder). good to
know that it has that effect for you.

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noodle
yeah, they at least serve some purpose.

i feel like a better implementation of them would be something similar to how
the digg button works. create some sort of widget that determines what
networks you're logged into, and only display those buttons. that way, its not
a wall of buttons, but a custom menu of the sites you're at least making use
of as a registered user.

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villageidiot
should be possible by reading the browser's cookies for each of those sites,
assuming the user is using autologin. but i suspect publishers might be
reluctant to take away buttons for potential bookmarkers just in case they
don't use autologin.

