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Ask HN: How effective are "share this" buttons?

20 points by jwb119 ↗ HN
In your opinion do buttons that assist users in publishing your content to other sources (digg, facebook, etc.) really work?

My general feeling is that they are a waste of space, but I'm wondering if anyone has any helpful experience/data to share..

39 comments

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mattmaroon
Did Ghandi use Share This buttons? Does it matter?
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critke
seems like this "ghandi ... does it matter?" thing is getting a little out of hand here today....
jasonlbaptiste
this is officially my favorite comment of the day. matt, thank you for giving hn some humor :-)
Tichy
The question should be "would Ghandi have used share this buttons".

Honestly, I have no idea.

aneesh
The proper spelling is Gandhi.
mattmaroon
Good point. I actually knew that and got it right at first, then seem to have picked up the wrong one from a comment subconsciously. Fascinating.
alex_c
I can see this become the opposite of "You know who else was using [Share This] buttons?" meme from Fark.
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BinaryPie
We use them by demand from the customer. They are also VERY helpful for viral growth. While most tech savvy users will probably not use the feature there are many other demographics that will.
andreyf
Absolute waste of space. I've never clicked on one, nor do I intend to. If I really wanted one, I'd find or write a greasmonkey script, bookmarklet, or what have you.

Disclaimer: Obviously, different users have different habits. These are mine.

gourneau
As I user I do use these buttons, when I am not on my personal machines.

If I am on one of my own machines, I use the wonderful Firefox plugin Shareaholic http://www.shareaholic.com/ to easily share links.

As a developer would I use these buttons? Yes.

Why use these buttons when it is possible for users to manually share links using X service?

Because these buttons reduce the cognitive load of sharing that link. Making it more likely that lazy users will share it.

From http://tantek.com/log/2007/02.html#d19t1813 "More specifically, all other things being equal, the cognitive load required to complete an action or task in a human computer interface is directly (probably linearly) proportional to the number of clicks and keystrokes required to complete that action or task. Cognitive load can be roughly defined as "how mentally easy/hard it feels to do something".

anamax
> cognitive load required to complete an action or task in a human computer interface is directly (probably linearly) proportional to the number of clicks and keystrokes required to complete that action or task

The big question isn't cognitive load but "will the user complete the sequence" rates.

For that, I doubt that the drop-off is linear. I suspect success falls off exponentially in the number of clicks and/or mouse moves. That is, each time I have have to move my mouse or click, there's a non-zero chance that I'll give up.

I'd guess that clicks have a higher "forget it" ratio because clicks typically bring up new screens.

ctingom
The Shareaholic Firefox plugin looks interesting, I was surprised to see it even has a YC Hacker News submit link, too.
arjunb
like another user mentioned, shareaholic looks pretty interesting. however, i think browser plugins are too high friction for an average user to install. has anyone implemented something similar as a bookmarklet?
bjclark
"high friction"

I like that, I'm stealing it. :)

sam_in_nyc
I'm releasing a prototype in a few days. Sit tight.
fauigerzigerk
That's an interesting link. I very much doubt the linearity of these things though.
aupajo
All this is speculation, we need data.

Someone needs to write a script for Share This which records every time someone clicks on it and then compare those numbers to the amount of actual traffic, to find out what percentage of visitors click that button.

Volunteers?

WalterGR
I can't speak for Share This, but here's some actual data for AddThis from my site, http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ :

Past year: 1.5 million visits, 4.7 million pageviews, and 108 "saves" via AddThis.

In the past month, 40% of saves were for Facebook, 40% for Google Bookmarks, and 20% for browser bookmarks.

rksprst
I use them frequently when I want to share something. If I'm reading a newspaper story that's interesting and I want to share it with my gf or friends, I usually use the "email it" button. If it's something that I'm really passionate about, then I might submit it to facebook, digg, etc... Though mostly I mainly use the email it feature.
patio11
In a non-technical niche, for the last 100,000 times I've displayed them, they've been clicked on 4 times and resulted in 1 save.

On the other hand, for the right sort of material (authoritative "you'll want to read this later" reference aimed at geeks), Delicious buttons perform VERY well for me.

Mystalic
My AddThis and ShareThis have been used over 1000 times.

One of them got me to the front page of digg.

That's enough evidence for me. It's about maximizing space. AddThis is the best in that respect.

kwamenum86
Depends on your website's audience.
joshu
They don't do much. Nobody clicks them.

People who use those products already have bookmarklets or extensions or toolbars or whtever already installed.

It's more of a subtle way for publishers to tell their audiences to share with other people.

sjs382
This is a complete guess and have no evidence to support it:

I don't believe the buttons offer ANY advantage because the people most likely to use them are the same crowd of enthusiasts that already have the bookmarklets in their "bookmark toolbar" that offer the exact same functionality.

mwinters58
My complete guess is pretty much the opposite :)

My friends have no idea what delicious is, nor other tagging/bookmarking programs, but they love to find interesting/funny content on the web and share that on facebook. I do the same, even though I have delicious and facebook bookmarklets installed. Just lazy I guess

sjs382
That's an interesting perspective I never considered. I guess I was restricting my domain to 'enthusiast' applications like delicious, reddit, digg, etc. Facebook, I agree, is one place where these links would benefit the user.
oscardelben
We are using a "share this" button for a video based startup, and in my experience it is not important how many people will click on that button, but the potential traffic that those link could generate. So my conclusion is that share this button is very effective for video advertising but less effective for social bookmarking.
stuntgoat
When looking at music listings, the button to add the event to my Ggle calendar is kick-ass. I guess I could share my calendar with others too. I just thought I would share that with you.
sgupta
"Share this" buttons gently remind people to spread the word, even if they don't use the actual button.

(referenced from Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz)

klon
Our stats indicate a 0.3% click rate
pclark
interesting topic!

my project will be launching soon, and it'll be interesting to see which implementation we should take:

a) share this buttons b) "email this" button c) no buttons

tdavis
I'd tell you if we could log into addthis.com with the credentials their site provided as our current username and password. Or if they replied to customer emails. AKA if they weren't a shit pile.
leftnode
I can offer an alternative point of view in that they're clicked numerous times for other applications. I write tracking software for one of our clients who sends out hundreds of thousands/millions of emails to their 400,000 person email list (all legit/opt in). The emails have links to short movies that they can then click a Share Now/Send To A Friend button so their friend will get the movie link too.

I don't have any numbers off the top of my head, but they have a pretty decent click rate, way more than 10%. Most of these people are a non-technical audience, so I think that has a lot to do with it too.