A Useful Bookmarking Tool: AddThis
Mar
19
As part of a recent upgrade, I added a new feature to the University of Florida News Web site: the AddThis bookmarking button.
While the site had included a couple of social bookmarking sites since 2007, users were limited in the services they could use directly. For example, if someone wanted to share an article on Facebook, they had to copy the address and navigate to Facebook.
AddThis offers a simpler process. It sends users directly to the site of their choice to save the link. It also presents a simple, expandable interface - we no longer had to limit the site to two services. AddThis even updates the interface with new social bookmarking sites, without requiring updates to the UF News site.
My favorite feature is AddThis’ analytics. You get a dashboard with graphs showing how much people are bookmarking your content, and you can drill down to see what people are bookmarking and what services they are using. Along with general Web statistics, it helps build a better picture of how people find your content.
I recommend you consider using AddThis on sites that change frequently, such as news sites or blogs. It’s a simple matter of adding a small code snippet to your pages.
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