If you're using a newsreader, you may notice that I now have a set of social bookmarking icons at the bottom of every blog post. It looks like this in Google Reader:
The rel="nofollow" I have on them is more than a bit unnecessary, but I forgot to remove it, and what the hey, it still validates using FeedValidator!
Anyway, it's trivial to add. In WordPress, the most obvious way is to edit the "wp-rss.php," "wp-rss2.php," "wp-atom.php," and "wp-rdf.php" files the same way you would do it in HTML. Voila!
Note: This change was suggested by someone to me, but I don't have his name. If you're a reader and leave a comment, I'll credit you here.
It's really surprising that almost nobody does this. If such icons improve the user experience and result in more bookmarks on a blog web site, the same will apply to those who use newsreaders to read the blog, no?
I actually hacked in some changes to Sociable to do this elegantly. I emailed the author, Peter Harkins, with the changes to see if he'd add the functionality. We'll see. If you want my version, contact me. If Peter updates Sociable, I'll update this post to reflect it.
October 20th, 2006 at 6:40 am
For those who don't use WordPress:
Feel free to use our recently released Social Bookmarks Manager (http://www.socialbookmarksmanager.com). It's freeware
October 21st, 2006 at 8:46 am
This is nice.. never seen it before.. only those textadverts in rss, not bookmarks. Unfortunately my site isnt worth it. I am gonna try it on a music site.. when new downloads are available..
October 21st, 2006 at 8:50 am
could you mail me it please.. :), no obligation just if you want
October 29th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Hey there. I'm badly behind on Sociable mail at the moment but hope to catch up soon.
I glad to hear that you dig Sociable but I deliberately left out the option to add links to feeds. I don't think they have much added value to the sophisticated users of feed readers, and the feed is intended to be a machine-readable representation of a site's content rather than a pretty and human-friendly presentation.
I know my techie rationale will sound pretty weak from a marketing perspective, so I'm glad you're OK with editing the PHP.
I notice from your sidebar you've written about SEO and PHP; you might enjoy reading two articles I've written on building and cleaning up URLs to be search-engine friendly.
Have a good one.
October 30th, 2006 at 12:59 am
I can't agree with you there, as even experienced users are lazy. When it comes to marketing -- even to astute users, making it easier always helps.
I'm also not sure I agree with your assessment that they be "machine readable." Yes, RSS is also for syndication, but the vast majority of my RSS users are not syndicating -- only reading.
I can only surmise, then, that not providing such buttons ignores a critical opportunity for an effective call to action.
I'm a techie too, but I see it from both sides. It's kinda lame, but I suspect it's effective.
Geek to geek, I have to disagree with you
December 25th, 2006 at 7:43 am
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