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AddToAny Relaunches With Counters and More Customization Options
Social services widget creator AddToAny has announced the launch of a new version of their share widget today. Back in June they launched "smart menus" within their widget. Mashable has a good overview of the new features which include counters for Digg and Delicious, more color selections and the ability to prioritize the way sources are displayed in the widget.
They have also added the open share icon which is similar to the orange RSS icon that is the standard. There are also more email options similar to the email a friend widget from SocialTwist. In September, AddToAny competitor AddThis was acquired by Clearspring.
One question I’ve been struggling with is if anyone actually uses these "share" widgets. I’ve found that on CN there’s nearly no usage, on HTMLCenter there’s a bit more usage but still tiny. The individual icons for each service seem to work much better on my sites. Adding more features is great but getting more usage is critical. On sites that I manage for clients in a variety of categories, usage is also low. There are a good number of these share widgets and the one who figures out how to get actual interaction will be the category winner.
I use them extensively but have been frustrated by the claims of personalization. It seems once I choose one service to ‘remember,’ the rest vanish. I hope that’s not on purpose and that it’s a matter of me not understanding how to properly set things up. But it bodes ill for general use.
Hi Casey,
It sounds like you’re recalling one of the early versions of these tools, where once you check “Remember” the service automatically redirects to the ONE service you chose thereafter. The feature was a useful and neat circa 2006, but AddToAny has gotten a lot smarter since the introduction of our drop-down menus.
Read up on AddToAny’s Smart Menus on CenterNetworks and look for our blog post for details. We’d love to hear what you think!
It’s true, Allen, when you compare the number of sharing/saving actions (as tracked) to the number of pageviews, the margin of difference is fairly large. Fact is, the segment of your audience that actually spreads your content is doing so manually or via browser bookmarklets/extensions (tougher to track), or through a web widget. I don’t have concrete evidence that most sharing takes place outside of these widgets, but I wouldn’t doubt that desktop activity is higher. That said, it’s still wise to provide a quick vehicle to sharing and saving your content (more on that below).
First, AddToAny has done a number of things to successfully boost activity through the widget:
Sure individual icons work well and it’s a good idea to optimize for a couple key services, but it’s beneficial to ensure that all your visitors are covered.
Things to consider about these widgets in general: