I often joke about all those sidebar icons bloggers use to show their affiliations. I call them little badges of courage. Now, bloggers are adding “do this” links at the bottom of posts, lots of them. They include Email this Article, Subscribe to this feed, Digg this, Add to del.icio.us, Add to Technorati Favorites, Add to Simpy, Mark in Ma.gnolia, Bookmark with OnlyWire, Slashdot This, Add to Yahoo, Furl This, Spurl This, Seed This.
So, dear readers please read my post, comment, and then do something else with it. Social bookmarking is good for the blogosphere, reblog topics, continuing the conversation elsewhere — I get that, but all those links make it a real bitch to track posts about you because every article with a “do this” can show up in Technorati and on Google. It’s also adding clutter to your posts and page and I wonder what the actual click through on those links is.
Is anyone actually doing something else with your post with those links?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
ellenweber 04.23.06 at 3:24 am
You build a good case for keeping only that which is essential. Seems to me that blogging is still too new to sort and organize the practices enough for efficient use of our time and resources. That might be the reason that we see clutter on the sides, where hopefully we’ll design it to be more meat to the core. Thanks for starting us in that direction!
-b- 04.23.06 at 8:09 am
You’re welcome. For me, I don’t know what the difference between Furl, Spurl, Larry, More, or Curl.
ellenweber 04.24.06 at 3:16 am
One frustrating part of your point, is that with so much extra cluttering pages it takes too much time and effort to find the core ideas and then post to topics. All to say your ideas are well taken here and hopefully we can remove the fog from many of these sites we visit as bloggers. Thanks!