For the past few weeks I had a ShareThis button on the blog. First on posts viewed singly and then on all posts displayed on the home page. ShareThis allows readers to forward content to other services (email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) I went with ShareThis because visually it was the least noxious of similar services.

How’d it work it? Neither here nor there. It saw a bit of use by readers but not enough to justify keeping it on the site. Overall, having looked at number of these services, I think they all suffer from overkill. Most don’t let you edit the number of links provided. So, it’s common for them to present 30-50 links, the majority of them being too obscure to warrant inclusion. I also think that many in the heavy social media user crowd will already have plug-ins for their web browsers negating the need for sharing buttons.

In other blog news, I’ve made some updates this morning:

• The sidebar links and information now appear on every page.
• The sidebar now scrolls with the page (this allows it to be visible via scrolling if the browser window is shorter than the sidebar column and it means the sidebar will not overlap the blog footer.)
• Posts viewed singly now have navigation at the bottom allowing for easy movement to the next or to the previous post.
• I got rid of that pesky, tiny, smiley face which was showing up in the footer. Turns out it appears when you use the WordPress.com Stats widget. The smiley face is seen by everyone except the admin (IOW, for the admin to see it the admin must view the blog when logged out.) There’s an easy way to get rid of it – the WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover widget.

–

12/5/09 – Already going back on my word.  Trying a Share/Save button (different service from ShareThis.)

–

12/6/09 – The flirtation continues… I tried the AddToAny Share/Save button. It’s nice and configurable, it can be anything from text or just an icon to a large horizontal button. I was impressed that it learns which services a person uses and puts those front and center. I also had some questions and its author sent me two emails this weekend. Impressive but the button wouldn’t play nice with my WordPress theme when viewed in Safari. This is a fault of Safari’s not the AddToAny code.

So, in one of those weekend sidetrack projects I’m known for – I made my own links that get added automatically on Learning to See’s home page and when individual posts are viewed. The code was cobbled together from suggestions on two sites (Anidandesign.com and MichaelMerrell.com) along with some reverse engineering of sites I’ve seen online. It’s very simple as you can see below, just text based links, but the advantage of doing it this way is that it can fit within the style of your WordPress theme. It won’t call undue attention to itself (a problem with the rows of colored icons many folks use.)

I’m not big on social media myself beyond having a blog but I can see the usefulness in helping those that are and in giving this a longer test run.  Since, ’tis the season, here’s Jon’s make-your-own text based social media bar:

ShareLink: <br> <a href=”mailto:?subject=<?php the_title(); ?>&body=Check out this post:%20<?php the_permalink(); ?>” title=”Email a link to: <?php the_title(); ?>”>Email</a> • <a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading <?php the_permalink(); ?>” title=”Tweet This” target=”_blank”>Twitter</a> • <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u= <?php echo get_permalink() ?>” title=”Share on Facebook” target=”_blank”>Facebook</a> • <a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php echo get_permalink() ?> &title=<?php the_title(); ?>” title=”Bookmark on Delicious” target=”_blank”>del.icio.us</a> • <a href=”http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url= <?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>” title=”Stumble This” target=”_blank”>StumbleUpon</a> • <a href=”http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url= <?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>” title=”Digg This” target=”_blank”>Digg</a> • <a href=”http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url= <?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>” title=”Share on Linkedin” target=”_blank”>Linkedin</a>

I’ve dubbed it ShareLink but you should feel free to call it anything you want. A title may not be needed at all. If you want it in your single posts then add it to the single.php file, if you want it on your index page then add it to your index.php file.

–

1/26/10 – It’s been just over seven weeks since adding the ShareLink links mentioned above. In that time my site and blog had over 10,000 pageviews. With all those views ShareLink was used only ten times (1/10 of 1 Percent of pageviews.) Five times for Facebook, four times for email, and one time for Twitter. Given that, I’ve deleted the links for Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Linkedin.

I know another photographer who named his blog, Zero Comments. I think that’s a great name. It speaks to the majority of bloggers who are writing for writing’s sake or posting images regardless of recognition. For those of us toiling away under these conditions it’s kind of exciting when you do get a blog comment. Someone cared enough to write!

Unfortunately, more often than not, the comment you get is not really a comment. It’s an ad or a questionable hyperlink disguised as a comment. I’ve gotten a few of these lately and some forensic Googling has shown some odd meeting points.

Here’s a comment I received Monday morning,

Hi, I’ve just come across your website while searching around the Internet as I am looking for some information on electric cellos!. It’s a very interesting site so I have bookmarked you and I will revisit soon to have a more indepth look when I’ll more free time.

Now, I double-checked my blog. While I have written about music, I have never written about cellos or electric cellos. The closet thing I have on my blog are images from Monticello. So, there’s no type of search which would lead the commenter to my site. I also know from my site stats that they did not find me by using a search engine.

In the commenter’s name they did leave a link to a site about electric cellos and that’s where things get strange. I’m not going to link to their site because I don’t want to fulfill their goals of publishing their links but suffice it to say their site looks like this:

Almost looks legit until you look at the site’s links. Every external link leads to one Amazon.com page. A page of electric cellos. Seeing this I wondered, what’s the point? Why create a site whose sole purpose is to lead to an Amazon page of electric cellos? Why create the software or pay people to leave blog comments pointing to the same?

On a whim I Googled parts of the comment I received. It led me to other blogs, all with similar comments. Here’s one I found,

Hi there, I’ve just stumbled upon your blog whilst hunting around Google as I am looking for some info on engine lifts!. It’s a good blog so I bookmarked your site and will revisit you soon to allow more time for a more indepth look when I can give it more time.

Its author has a hyperlink to this site:

Look familiar? In keeping with the electric cello format, the external links on this site lead to an Amazon search page of engine lifts.

Now scroll down to either Amazon search page and look through the Customers with Similar Searches window. You’ll find that people who search for engine lifts also search for electric cellos and vice versa.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories but there’s definitely something afoot here… Maybe there is a little known group of Internet manipulating electric cello playing mechanics?