“Get rid of those RIDICULOUS social media links at the bottom of every post. The only people who have the power to get any of your posts ranking well in Social Media Networks don’t need the little buttons to do it. If they think you’re worthy, they’ll submit regardless.” [via mass-automation]
If your site visitors use tools like del.icio.us, Mister Wong, Digg, Stumble Upon, Netvibes or any similar websites on a regular basis, they already have a browser-plugin or scriptlet in use to add links or content to the described services.
The same goes for SnapShots — Apart from the “monetizing-my-blog aspect” I have no clue why websites like Read/WriteWeb or TechCrunch implemented those services. It’s just annoying. The moment I try to click a link, a layer is popping up, making it almost impossible to me to follow the original link. If I need additional information, I simply visit the site. If I really want to use this service I install the plugin for my favourite browser.
There is absolutely no use for your visitors to see a horde of “badges” and “buttons” on the sidebar showing off your technorati ranking, displaying who’s on your site or presenting the five rss-readers. If your users like your content, they like it because of the useful content and not because of your technorati-ranking. Make your sites usable again and remove those silly badges, plugins and add-ons. Emphasis on “useless”.
12 responses to “Get rid of useless badges”
Micah,
in my opinion, both of them are quite good and small badges – and sometimes even useful ;)
I personally don’t like the pop-up share icons that load up every single social site on the planet. I do however like to have the ones that are relevant to the site. I also disagree that everyone has plugins for this. Like another poster already already said, I also manually add to my delicious and the icons help. I am a web designer and I do have plugins like web developers tool kit, but I don’t want to clog up my browser with 9 million plugins. I would rather just have the most important icons on the site. That said, if the site is really that worthy I will usually go to delicious and bookmark it, but, if the author makes it easy for me, I am even more likely to bookmark it.
I think it’s all about moderation really. Show the social sites that you are into and that are relevant to you. Some people do go overboard.