Joel alerted me to Vanity Fair’s share tool. I deal with two social networking sites, Facebook and Linkedin, and I am already facing social networking fatigue.
But the intriguing question is, do all these options mean VF gets or doesn’t get social media?
They get social media, alright. What they don’t get is usability.
The less editing/ curating, the less usability. Always the same the problem.
They don’t get it at all. You should never do things just to do them. There has to be a specific purpose and use for each social media outlet you create. If you aren’t going to bookmark useful sites or interesting pictures/videos for your users, don’t get a Digg or delicious account. If you aren’t going to post pictures, don’t sign up for flickr. You can’t just sign up for everything in existence, simply for the sake of having a presence there. It makes the company look dumb.
They really don’t know what they’re doing with social media. I think twitter and facebook are time-consuming enough, and have an endless amount of uses to cater to any product, service or brand. Then, there are countless others that are used here and there, but you must understand what you’re doing on them and how it maintains a two-way conversation with your consumer.
They’re actually using the AddThis button (http://www.addthis.com/), which was recently updated with the full list you see with the screenshot. It doesn’t necessarily mean that VF has a presence in these (though I’m guessing they’d have a few!) — it’s a quick way for people to add info to their own social networks. I definitely agree that you have to know what you’re doing to use them effectively.
I agree with the comment above — the social media connectivity is there, but the usability with this new tool is problematic! It’s overwhelming enough to make users close the window..
Thanks for all the great comments. I think Amber is correct. All these options are for people who might use these social media services.
And it is all about usability. Too many choices leads to confusion. But deciding upon which ones are best is also difficult, especially when a service’s popularity can rise and fall quickly.
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all it needs is a sort function so the user can type the service(s) that matter to them without being confused by all of the others that don’t apply