No button barrage. No link litter. No JavaScript jiggery-pokery.
Scroll down to have a look at the bottom of this text for a moment. There is no angry fruit salad cacophony of buttons and links there.
There is no bookmarking ribbon of buttons to suggest that you should bookmark this, digg this, reddit this!, furl it, Add To Mixx!, Save to del.icio.us, Stumble it! or Buzz Up!.
There is no FARK it button despite FARK’s enticing promise that Websites displaying the FarkIt™ button prominently will be given Fark listing preference over those that do not
.
There is no link with the embarrassingly unoriginal title permalink
. There is no button inviting you to email this link.
There is no AddThis or ShareThis button tracking your clicking
behaviour. There
is no button asking you to tweet this. There is not even a button inviting you to
Follow me on Twitter.
No button barrage. No link litter. No JavaScript jiggery-pokery. No request, suggestion, invitation, reminder or hint. No begging, bragging or pleading.
There is just a brief copyright message. It lets you know this text is mine, and confirms that you have really reached the end of the body text.
Social bookmarking is cool, but a barrage of begging bookmarks on your every blog post is lame.
Social bookmarking is cool, but a barrage of begging bookmarks on your every blog post is lame.
Ending your text with a prompt to bookmark it is not just lame because it is pathetically pushy, it is even somewhat insulting. Begging your reader t bookmark your text is darned close to telling them that you do not trust to them to appreciate the stellar brilliance, exquisite wit and wisdom of your text on their own. If you did trust them to make that decision on their own, you would not push those buttons in their face.
But wait, maybe you are not begging, but bragging. Those buttons are on your every post because of your sheer awesomeness. All your text is so terrific, that your reader cannot help but feel an irresistible urge to bookmark it, and bookmark it right now. Really now, even if your brilliance manages to make the entire pantheon of world literature pales in comparison, even if you are simply the most magnificent author in the entire space-time continuum, you could still trust your readers to follow that irresistible urge on their own.
A bookmark ribbon is a turn-off.
A bookmark ribbon is a turn-off. You may have started it because everyone else is doing it or because you really think it will get you more links, but have you ever considered that readers may be so turned-off by your pushiness that they do not bookmark your text as a result?
Attaching a bookmark ribbon to your every post is such a blatant attempt to
show how Web 2.0
-savvy you are, how hip you are with social bookmarking, that it is painfully obvious that you are in fact utterly and completely clueless.
If you grokked social bookmarking even a littlest bit (like say, ever tried to use it yourself), you would understand that bookmarkers are not to going to waste their time scanning your bookmark ribbon to see whether you included their favourite service, but will simply reach for that handy bookmarking button on their browser toolbar.
Tracking your visitors’ bookmarking habits by deploying AddThis or ShareThis is not nice.
It is an invasion of their privacy. Surely all the other data you get about page
views is enough already?
Perhaps more to the point, are you sure you are not
going to be depressed when you find that only one visitor bookmarked your blog
post, and then discover that the IP address belongs to you yourself, because you
tested the button?
Besides, using a button that only shows for visitors that allow browser scripting isn’t
exactly the most convincing display of your web-savvy.
A bookmark ribbon is a bandwidth hog.
A bookmark ribbon is a bandwidth hog. If there are many buttons, the links themselves can add up to several kilobytes already, but the button images are the real bandwidth hog. Each button image is a separate download and the total size of those images often exceeds the size of the text. You probably think of the buttons as something small you add to the text, but more often than not the buttons are bigger than the text. The increased page size translates into slower downloads and increased bandwidth bills.
The marketeers of those bookmarking companies are snickering behind your back
-well, only when they are not rolling on the floor thigh-slapping themselves
with laughter.
They did not just get you to advertise them for free, they even got you to pick
up the tab for their advertising campaign. You are a willing pawn, obediently
offering up your time and money to support their scheme for bookmark domination.
They just can’t stop laughing.
The button-wielding marketeers like to say you get a free button to help your
visitors
bookmark your pages. Truth is, those visitors do not need or want that button to
bookmark your page, the button is slowing down your server, and you have been
tricked into paying the bandwidth for their advertising.
Each button is an
small advertisement with a rank-building link to their website. You are
promoting their site and picking up the tab. You are carrying the cost of
building their empire. You should be charging them the normal advertising rate.
Once you grok that you will probably feel foolish already, but that is not even
the worst of it; everyone who visits your site notices it too…
Begging for bookmarks is a roundabout way of admitting that the drivel you write is not worth bookmarking.
Begging for bookmarks is a roundabout way of admitting that the drivel you write is not worth bookmarking. After all, if your text were any good, you would not need to beg so much.
Still, bookmark buttons are not entirely useless. Interpreted as an self-rating
system, the number and variety of buttons an author chooses to are is a fairly
good indicator of drivelosity. More buttons suggests a higher rating on the
drivelosity scale.
Thus, the more buttons you think you need, the
less likely I am to read your text.
Once you add one button, some visitor will clamour for another button - not because they need the button at all, but because they want you to also advertise the service they use, they feel slighted if you only push other bookmarking services. Users want their favourite bookmarking service to be successful. You will end up adding every one of them, and keep adding buttons as new bookmarking services appear. That’s just too much. You have to make a choice, but how do you decide to make that choice?
The solution is to not choose any button at all. Choose to display no
bookmark buttons, but to truly support user by supporting he buttons they
already have on their browser toolbar. Simply make
sure that titles are permalinks marked with class="permalink". If you use blogging software, it will probably
have an option to do that already. Smart bookmarking tools
scan the page for that. That does not beg the user to bookmark the page, but
supports the users who decide to bookmark it.
You can use that class to style the permalink, for example to add just one generic permalink icon - an icon that says permalink, without implying any particular bookmarking service. An simple unbroken chain icon has become the de facto standard for that.
Stop wasting your time managing bookmark add-ins and use it to write something worth reading and sharing.
Unclutter your pages. Tear your bookmark ribbon. Stop the bookmark button barrage, lose the link litter, end the JavaScript jiggery-pokery. Enjoy faster page downloads, lower bandwidth bills and more respect.
Stop wasting your time managing bookmark add-ins and use it to write something worth reading and worth sharing. Write something worth bookmarking and your readers will do so.
Furl was shut down in 2009. It was bought by diigo, a site that was missing from the list below. The list has been updated
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.