Well, the profusion of little social-bookmarking buttons that I’ve been putting on the bottom of some of my more worthy posts seems to have drawn the ire of the webcritics at Signal vs. Noise:
This focus on campaigning over content seems like a classic case of
misplaced priorities. The reason posts wind up at Digg, Delicious, or
elsewhere isn’t because the authors made it easier to vote for them
(it’s already easy). A post winds up at these sites because people
respond to its content and quality.So think twice before
badgering readers with “vote for me†pleas. The hectoring is tiresome,
it results in extraneous visual noise, it makes your site look cheap,
and the benefits are dubious at best. Instead, focus on delivering great content. If you do, people will figure out how to spread the word just fine.
Interesting take. However, reality does not work exactly like that – that this world is not a meritocracy would be evident to anyone sufficiently far removed from the cozy confines of grade-inflated academia, where every day consists of ego massages and shiny awards for showing up (all part of the soothing “self-esteem enhancement” push in the modern American educational system). Here in Hollywood, we have a saying: it don’t matter how you got there. It just matters how you stay there.
So if someone is hustling traffic for his site, more power to them. I’m going to hustle too. Those who do not hustle, who feel it’s all just “Beneath them, that’s for those poor souls who have to work for a living…” Hey, fine. Whatever floats your boat. Please take it easy. Sit back, sip a frosty cocktail and pat yourself on the back for being superior.
Meanwhile, some of the users that are out there working wrote back:
Pete Ottery: “Yes, multitudes of these icons on every site everywhere
gets tired real quick – but for us at news.com.au we decided to trial a
few select ones at the bottom of articles (example).
Informal number checking suggests there’s about 10 times more stories
from news.com.au being posted on digg now since those buttons were
placed there. (maybe 5 a week pre buttons, 50 a week immediately after
buttons being placed.)â€
Sounds pretty good to me. While it is true that many users are quite technically savvy, the vast majority of people (read: the audience that you want to attract, should you actually want to make money) are not all that plugged in. So if you give them the option, if they want, to give your stuff a thumbs-up, well, isn’t that in keeping with the true spirit of the web? Information wants to be free, after all…
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