Debris
There are a bunch of points in this entry on debris that are great, but this is my favorite: “It stopped mattering whether the feature was even useful to the visitor. We ask our visitors to ‘Digg This’ not because it adds any value to their experience, but because we need the traffic.”
That’s always really bothered me about those “bookmark this” or “Digg this” buttons. If someone already uses Digg or del.icio.us they know how to bookmark your site. It just feels so icky.
Anyway, go read the whole thing.
Hi, I'm 
i was recently talking to a friend about just this. we’re redesigning a site of ours and we were talking about how badges actually make the content less accessible. there’s too much clutter on pages already – and everyone’s adding to it with ‘debris’ for each and every individual post.
I see what you mean…
Although I’ve always thought of those buttons as being mostly to the benefit of Digg / delicious, in helping to raise *their* profiles. It helps them be seen as less of a geek thing if they’ve got their badges all over the NYT for instance.
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