The new blog clutter?

April 5, 2006

I’m an advocate for less blog clutter and one thing I’ve been noticing lately is that more and more clients and blogs in general are showing a tonne of social bookmarking icons. If you’re using Wordpress, there’s a really nice and easy-to-use plugin called Sociable which does the trick. And if you’re wondering about what are the social bookmarking sites out there, I haven’t heard of some of the 25 sites Sociable gives you the options of showing (with another 25 or so on the way!).

Icons

At one point I had an “Add to delicious” (text) link on my blog but I removed it.

Why?

For the casual visitor to my site who may have come from a search engine, someone who doesn’t know what delicious is (and if you find that hard to believe, you’re mixing with a select group of people) an “Add to delicious” is meaningless and even sounds ridiculous.

For visitors who use delicious, they’ll probably have a bookmarklet (button they installed in their browser’s toolbar) which does this for them. You could argue that encouraging them to bookmark it helps your site get more traffic. On the other hand, if you’re writing such good posts they want to refer back to, they’re going to bookmark it somehow.

Having a tonne of icons under each post can clutter up your site (especially if you go for the default of showing all the icons) and is only meaningful to people who use those sites.

I was reminded to post this after reading wg’s post the other day. Andreas agrees and says the new social bookmarking icons are like the buttons for site metadata craze.

Do you find social bookmarking icons helpful? Is there a place for them? Are they being overused (already)?

See also
Comments

  1. Interesting post. I was just pondering almost the exact same thing: Trying to de-clutter the blog a bit. Last week I removed most of the “subscribe me” chicklets that I’d piled into my sidebar over the last half year. This morning I was pondering the social bookmarks links as well. Synchronicity?

    I’ve been using the Sociable plug-in (even contributed a tiny wee bit) and, from a geek perspective, sure like it. But I’m only showing it in the single post view. It was just too much on the main page. And I think your rationale pretty much nails it: Folks who use those bookmarking services already have bookmarklets installed (just like *I* do). The “digg” type links might be a small exception, but I never show that one. My content isn’t all that compelling and frankly my little server would go up in flames if I got accidentally dugg.

    Long story short, I’m somewhat relieved to know I’m not the only one pondering such ponderables. :-)

    — HandySolo, April 5, 2006

  2. rachel, I agree with you less clutter is better. I hate getting onto blogs that are crowded with tons of adverts, social bookmarks, buttons, etc. That’s why I’ve got the setup I’ve chosen, I like a couple very select things here and there - my top choices - but the rest is overkill. I like to be able to go onto a site and see what that person uses or likes for tools on his/her blog but only if it is not over the top. So I say pick the top 3 things you like and show ‘em off but nobody cares about the rest.

    — c. Wess Daniels, April 5, 2006

  3. Rachel - I hate those buttons. In my opinion it is laying to out there like you are begging for the person to click one. I feel like if the article deserves to be bookmarked the reader will do so.

    — Dennis Bullock, April 5, 2006

  4. I have mixed opinions. Some sites use these icons well to add colour and style to a page. I think it does depend somewhat on your audience. If you are writing for converts, the buttons can be useful. If writing for non-technical audience, it should be plain language links. Id like to see a small ajax?? application simply titled “wanna share this” which when clicked opens up a little options box. From that you could email, post, submit, whatever. I remember reading an article a while back (i think Dion Hinchcliffe) that talked about not getting caught up in web2.0 jargon. I think users would tag and share posts if it wasnt all brand names.

    — Gareth, April 5, 2006

  5. Yes, I see what you mean. I didn’t know what delicious was a few months ago and as for many of the other bookmarking sites, I only find out about them because I’m curious and it’s actually part of my business to know these things.

    — Stephan Miller, April 5, 2006

  6. i would have to agree that bookmarking tools are unnecessary and do nothing but add additional weight and bloat to a page. you’ve already highlighted the reasons why i’ve hesitated to make use of any sort of plugins similar to sociable.

    if readers find your content interesting or noteworthy, they’ll bookmark it themselves without making use of the “convenient” bookmark chicklets that have been plastered to the bottom or sides of posts.

    — derek punsalan, April 5, 2006

  7. [...] Web - The new blog clutter? Tags [...]

    — RetortaBlog » Web - The new blog clutter?, April 5, 2006

  8. Couldn’t agree more. I wonder why all those ‘big names’ use so many social-icons on their blogs.

    — Kashif Aziz, April 5, 2006

  9. Terrific post and something I also pondered after adding the delicious option to my own site. For me, it was useful to add at first, but over time, I think it’s just become “noise” to my daily readership and only kills my keyword density further. I think from a SEO perspective it’s not a good idea either since, as you said, people with bookmark you some how.

    — Hagrin, April 6, 2006

  10. Yes they are overused. If I can say it, because I have one bookmark icon on my Blog. But in general I think its looking also prety od to see a bunch of those icons on a nice blog like the way you show up here.

    — redstar, April 6, 2006

  11. Hey Rachel,

    I just think the clutter is too much on most Blogs (mine included). I am in the process of de-cluttering my Blog and this post just confirms it’s probably a good idea.

    In my opinion, those social bookmarks along with the many RSS chicklets are just free advertisements for the services rather than being useful to Bloggers.

    Just my 2 cents,

    Joe

    — Joe, April 6, 2006

  12. [...] I hope I’ve addressed the valid concerns of critics, and I appreciate any advice for further improvements. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

    — Sociable Is The New Black - Push cx, April 6, 2006

  13. The buttons themselves are ugly. As is anything designed by dozens of different people, then stuck together. But the functionality isn’t quite so bad. Not everyone using a social bookmark service is obsessive about collecting. It may not instantly occur to them to save what they’re reading. They may have never considered a blog post as something to bookmark. In those cases, the buttons work as a reminder. Is that worth the noise? It all depends on the audience…

    When they are relevant to the sight, I’m sure there’s a better way to offer up similar functionality. …Something along the lines of what Gareth suggested.

    — jason, April 6, 2006

  14. For the blog I’m a part of, we display just 2 chicklets that we think our readers might be inclined to use. For the rest, we set up this page: http://internetstrategy.us/blog/index.php/site/subscribe/

    I agree that it can all get very cluttered. Once you get too many buttons or chicklets, it’s also hard to find the one you need, which sort of defeats the purpose of them being there to begin with.

    — Bethany, April 6, 2006

  15. I think solo has it nailed that users of the services already have a preferred way of interacting with them. I *does* seem like there’s a market for RosettaSocial (or somesuch, an app that offers a one-click access to the vast universe of social blogmarking).

    — farlane, April 6, 2006

  16. I think I might be the only one in the comments who actually likes them. I think it is a trial and error process of nailing the right combinations of chikets and sociable icons: Sharing information without overloading. I spent months figuring out the right combination. I am currently experimenting with ad placement. :)
    I think chiklets helped RSS become more known and the same thing is happening with social bookmarking. I think RSS chikets will become obsolete in a couple of years because Microsoft is finally supporting it (IE 7 and Outlook). After IE 7, 100% of web browsers will have RSS support.

    Social Bookmarking will take longer because currently only one browser, Flock, really supports it (no add-on or toolbar needed).

    What do you think?

    — Sid, April 6, 2006

  17. Almost forgot. What are your thoughts on sidebar clutter? I don’t mean chicklets. I mean flicker, latest comments, latest posts, about information, ads, and now widgets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sidebar starts to become very cluttered.

    — Sid, April 6, 2006

  18. Rachel,

    Funny… First you agreed with me on ProBlogger. Then I come to your blog and find you’re squarely on the same wavelength as I am. Small world.

    — tom sherman, April 7, 2006

  19. Hey Tom, thanks for stopping by! Glad there’s lots of us who realise that blogs are subject to fads… and this one is unnecessary - unless, as Gareth suggested, you have a simple link saying “Wanna share this?”

    — Rachel, April 7, 2006

  20. Could be a very simple “Web 2.0″-ish (also starting to hate that term) javascript… e.g. Put a link that says “Wanna share this?” and give it an id=”sharethis”

    Then the javascript hooks onto link w/ id=”sharethis” and when user mouses over, there’s a schmancy menu for sharing to various services. Since you’re querying a remote server, new services — i.e. the new crap.tac.u.lo.us domain added every day — could be easily added.

    — tom sherman, April 7, 2006

  21. I like that idea, Tom. I think there’s a Web 2.0 biz in there … big.boxofchickle.tz seems appropriately hard to to type.

    Of course you could just write the code yourself but then you couldn’t share it with your contacts…

    — farlane, April 7, 2006

  22. Sorry to double post, but I wanted to say that your “2 days ago” “4 days ago” tags are a neat idea, Rachel. Gives it a more human feeling. -Andrew

    — farlane, April 7, 2006

  23. [...] However, there’s been a bit of talk recently about Sociable and its “noisy” visual appearance, so I decided to take a little look when I installed it to see what could be done to “turn the volume” down a little and avoid “deafening” my readers (see how I extended that metaphor to breaking point? There’s going to be more of that in the all-new tossr, so stay tuned!) [...]

    — The sociable tossr at tossr, April 11, 2006

  24. I saw a blog that had about 10 chicklets, the last of which was a social shopping site Wists. The web is a css showcase, nothing for sale! Where is the meaning in that?

    — one, April 17, 2006

  25. I just luv your blog TajaC

    — TajaC TC, April 27, 2006

  26. [...] The image comes from this post by Rachel Cunliffe. As her blog shows, Rachel is a designer who favors a clean look, and who objects to the clutter of social icons. As she points out, people who bookmark things with del.icio.us, reddit, or whatever, tend to have buttons on their browsers to make the bookmarking quick and easy, so they don’t need the icons on the blog. [...]

    — Changing Way » Blog Archive » Social Bookmark Icons, May 20, 2006

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