From our experience at listennotes.com over past ~10 years - people do click share buttons. For us, it's still worth the screen real estate to place share buttons.
I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
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Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#62Who tf uses a government website to judge sharing metrics... "look at this awesome new regulation, buddy!"
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#63I use share buttons all the time on social platforms, and apps like Amazon that don't have any other way of deep linking. Lot's of people use apps that don't expose a link, share buttons are great and even better when they use standards like your OS's share functionality.
The article is discussing "share on [Facebook,Twitter,etc...]" type buttons on websites, not share via [OS functionality or other native app] buttons inside native apps. That said, I'm curious as to why someone with enough technical sophistication to be posting on HN browses Amazon with a native mobile app instead of a web browser.
it was preinstalled on my phone
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#64> 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?
What definition of “often” includes a 0.21% rate?
Try to affect human behavior at scale in any way and you pray for an effect size like that
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#650.21% sounds low but my initial thought is "I don't know if they are making the point they think they are". Conversion rates are always pretty low. That said, I've never clicked on a share button mostly because: - I don't know what it will do, it's not consistent at all - It might add extra crap "Your friend shared 'Story Title' with you!" - It will probably try/want to add tracking crap I always just copy the URL an…
Exactly but companies have started hijacking the copy icon button as well. You’d think that would just copy what’s in the text box, but they add tracking and other stuff. The worst is the YouTube share button. You can share the button with the exact second mark in the video and I would do that. Then one time I noticed the URL was shortened and added a lot of tracking.
It’s even weirder now. When you share a video through the button (which is the only way in the app) and another person opens the link while logged in you will now be linked in YouTube and you can share “directly” to the other’s YouTube. …
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#66Getting a user to do _anything_ on your site is difficult.
I run a SaaS product that has closed sign ups. I get inbound email asking (sometimes begging) for access to the service. I follow up with their usecase (make sure they are a good fit, I get a lot of abuse). They respond with a seemingly good fit. I generate the account and give them access and they never log in. This happens way more often than I would like.
It's so bad, I started to wonder if there's some kind of underground market for selling accounts. In the end, people are finicky and you can't predict anything they will do.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#67I didn't even bother adding them to miserablyunemployed.com. I asked a bunch of our users and zero said they wanted them. I built other stuff instead.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#68as someone who runs a small competitor to ga4 - yeah a lot of traffic shows up as direct cz sometimes utm params get stripped out by the OS / browser.
if people copy link - they also try manually remove the extra fluff.
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#69running my own experiment and the chatgpt button by now gets more clicks than the share buttons ie https://www.veganblatt.com/a/hafermilch-edeka (german)
16x16 flat icons in an invisible shade of gray?
Could vegan eye sight be that good? I have a theory about higher alertness from turning into prey from eating plants but that is not important right now :=)
Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs
#70> 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?
What definition of “often” includes a 0.21% rate?
The term "often" wouldn't relate to the overall rate, but to the frequency. According to my back-of-the-envelope math, it happened about once every 7 minutes.