While social media sites seem to be the future of web site aggregation, at least one element of it, there's one aspect of these sites that is starting to get annoying. Have you noticed some of your favorite sites adding a row and sometimes multiple rows of links to social news sites, ostensibly to make it easy for visitors to bookmark or save the site on del.icio.us, digg, netscape, reddit, furl, or any number of other sites of this ilk. Of course, there's also a myriad of service-specific RSS links, so that users of Bloglines, Google Reader, NewsGator, Netvibes, etc. can click on one link and subscribe to the site in the reader of their choice. The thing is, I'm not sure people even use these buttons, particularly when they're all grouped together; they've simply become litter online. Well, if you're someone that wants to offer your users the ability to easily subscribe to or bookmark your site, but want to avoid littering your site with all of these site-specific icons, check out Add This. Add This allows you to put a single image link on your site to take your readers to a dedicated bookmarking site page, and another for feed readers. Once there, they can choose the service they'd like to use, and perform the function they're looking to do. On one hand, all this seems to be doing is cleaning up your pages by putting all the site-specific links on an intermediate page - something you could arguably do yourself. But there's more to the Add This service, which makes it more compelling.
Add This aggregates statistics about which pages and site features your readers are collecting in their bookmark collections the most, and provide that data back to you. Assuming the web viewing population uses these links more than I think they do, this could provide some very valuable information as to what people are truly finding interesting on your site. Personally, I'm still a bit skeptical as to the need for all of these site-specific links. If this trend continues at the rate it's been going, ad blocking software will also be blocking social media bookmarking links just to provide a cleaner interface for web users. Hey, it's a thought.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-01-2006 @ 12:38AM
Hashim said...
If I use del.icio.us, I probably have the del.icio.us bookmark installed, making the link on a page unnecessary.
Reply
12-04-2006 @ 11:57AM
Badger Gravling said...
Just tried using AddThis and found that the log in doesn't recognise the account I'd created, and the first time I tried to add the button, it came back with an XML error.
Will persevere later, but not the best start
Reply
12-14-2006 @ 5:33AM
Rich Schmidt said...
Sounds just like what FeedBurner does for all the RSS subscription sites. You have one link on your blog, which takes you to FeedBurner & a "subscribe with..." list of different feedreaders. Keeps down the clutter & lets blog/site owners track subscribers.
Reply
1-05-2007 @ 9:26PM
putusukayasa said...
goooodddd
Reply
1-24-2007 @ 4:44AM
David said...
This site is pretty good, but I prefer Socialite (http://socialite.dehsoftware.com) because it will remember multiple sites so that I can post a blog article on Digg and del.icio.us!
Reply