Okay, so I think this is a question of philosophy. It’s really a question of “does it hurt to have it?” Let me back up and actually tell you what I’m talking about.
The “Share this with others” buttons that have become so ubiquitous are actually starting to bother me in certain circumstances. For instance, I just got an email from a company asking me to fill out their survey. In the bottom of the email message I see this:
Why would I share that with others? To me, this would be the equivalent of taking a credit card offer out of my mailbox, driving it down to the local TV news station, and persuading the anchor to read the offer on the evening newscast. To me, that’s a little bit past absurd.
Well, why not?
I get it. The small chance that someone actually goes through the trouble of digging, stumbling, redditing, bookmarking, etc. your article justifies having the option. But do people really do that? It seems to me that people will come to a blog post after reading a headline on a social news site, but they wouldn’t submit a blog post to a social news site. Other than contributing content that others will like, what’s the motivation for doing so? If you’re just a casual blog reader, are you sufficiently motivated to submit an article to social sites?
But there’s something desperate about adding a “share this” to EVERYTHING online. Here’s a good example. Widemile is an SEO firm, and they have a “share this” widget on their privacy policy. Seriously.
Netconcepts is another SEO firm that actually has a share this widget on their customer inquiry form. Yep, I’m sure people would get a lot of value from that page on digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc.
So, am I just being an angry old man, or do you feel the same? Doesn’t it just feel lazy? It reminds me of something Mitch Hedberg said: “When someone hands you a flyer, it’s like he’s saying, ‘Here, you throw this away.”
When I see a “Share This” in a ridiculous page, it’s like the folks behind the site are saying “Here, you promote this for us even if there’s no value here.”
Note: I realize that many sites are built on a template-based framework, and adding a share this embed code makes it show up on all pages. So yeah, I guess if your enitre site is built that way I can understand. But that seems cop-out-ish.
