Panasonic Youth rob sanheim writes about software, business, ruby, music, stuff and things

Lets not go Crazy with the Social Chiclets, People

Whats wrong with this picture?

Do we really need links (or chiclets) to TEN different social bookmarking services? I’m not even sure what half of those icons are for, even though I read quite a few of them. If I’m the type of person who submits things to digg or reedit, I probably have the bookmarketlet in my toolbar anyways. Feedburner has a pretty good solution to the feedreader chiclet problem. The problem is it wouldn’t really work for individual posts without some sort of common preference that says “I always bookmark with delicious”.

Offering one or two chiclets for the most common services I can understand, but offering an icon for every possible social service is just noise.

I have them on my blog, I don’t see what’s so wrong with them. I think they add a little color, and they don’t take up THAT much space. Plus you only see them on permalink pages. I know no one will probably ever use them, but I think that they’re some kind of symbol of your solidarity with the whole social bookmarking movement. :-)

I would be okay with all those reasons, if you kept it to the two or three services you really use and believe in. I think having the ten icons just over does it and looks cluttered.