Always assumed the SoMe sharing buttons was primarily motivated by the social sites to get their pixel on as many sites as possible to track behavior across sites
I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
101–107 of 107 posts
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#102> The share buttons got clicked 14,078 times. That’s a 0.21% usage rate, which works out to about 1 in 476 visitors. In other words, people not only click share buttons, but do it quite often?
> In other words, people not only click share buttons, but do it quite often?
And thats for gov.uk sites - they're websites where you mostly go to do something rather than browse for interesting content. I'd guess social media, local news and sites with cat videos would get more shares.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to be a pedant, sure, you could say people do click it! But then you always have to speak in disclaimers and technicality, or you will give the wrong impression. Most reasonable people will compare usage rate to some minimum effective threshold, under which you could basically say no one clicks the button. Even though that’s not technically true, it becomes a useful rule of thumb for how you should think…
> IMO if less than 5% of people are clicking the share button, then basically no one is clicking it. It's a crazy take and honestly just lack of sense over numbers. 5% is really high for something that the users have to actively do, even it's just a single button. MrBeast's videos have a like:view ratio less than 5%. Your take is saying that basically no one is clicking likes on MrBeast's videos.
I mean...
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#104> The share buttons got clicked 14,078 times. That’s a 0.21% usage rate, which works out to about 1 in 476 visitors. In other words, people not only click share buttons, but do it quite often?
No, a 1 in 500 rate is not often at all.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Maps share button is filled with tracking too, now I just copy the address and send it. I fear it’s all futile because even if we are privacy focused, if our friends and families are sharing links like this, Google knows how all of us are connected to each other in the real world.
You can copy a shared link and use the browser url bar to open it in a private window, or delete the extra crap at the end of the url (anything after the ? in a lot of cases). Granted, that doesn't help for the service you're using to communicate with people (phone provider, real time chat service, email provider, whatever) and/or store your contacts. Especially if you're talking to someone who, say, hasn't turned al…
There are tools which will strip tracking tags on copy. Firefox includes this, currently "Copy clean link" on the left-click context menu.
What are needed are tools which will discard any tracking automatically on receipt, whether that's email, messaging clients, operating systems (e.g., Android alternatives, iOS ... I have suspicions Android itself won't willingly implement this unless forced by lawsuit or regulation), and/or browsers. It would also be nice to see sharing / social sites and platforms drop this crap as well. The commercially-oriented, advertising-supported ones likely won't (willingly, as per Android above), but I could see Mastodon or other federated noncommercial systems adopting this approach and cleaning submitted links by default.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#106I've added a button that just triggers `navigator.share()`[1]. I know most users do the copy-paste dance, but I find this is a good middle ground. Adding functionality for my users, but not adding special social media share buttons. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...
I wish Apple would mandate this in their apps. Many apps open their own share-sheet and you need to tap another button to open the native one.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#107> The share buttons got clicked 14,078 times. That’s a 0.21% usage rate, which works out to about 1 in 476 visitors. In other words, people not only click share buttons, but do it quite often?
It seems like the number isn't very useful unless we have a baseline for how often the site is shared at all. If 0.2% of users share the site via a direct link, and 0.2% of your users share the site via a share button, for an overall share rate of 0.4%, that probably means the share button is worth keeping around.
If you assume the that half wouldn't also share it through it other means if needed. It'd need an A/B test.
For example, mobile Chrome has built-in share buttons, no copy-paste of URLs needed, no in-page button needed.