I might add additional links, but I doubt that I’ll ever go back to that button circus that I was running before… No one was using them anyway. lol.

Lorelle, I don’t doubt that a good majority of social network users are using a browser add-on like Shareaholic, or individual bookmarklets. Fact is, our all-inclusive widgets receive a *ton* of sharing activity across the board — they absolutely do get used.

For publishers, it’s always a good idea to optimize for a couple key services (great tip on checking your referrers/incomings), but it’s also highly beneficial to ensure that _all_ visitors are covered.

For instance, your visitors are not always near their browser bookmarklets or add-ons. Perhaps they’re using a computer at work, school, on a public workstation, etc. With AddToAny’s Share/Save button, they can still easily share & save using any service.

Also important, the sharing and bookmarking buttons serve as a _reminder_ to visitors to share and save [when the content is good]. Visitors can immediately see that you encourage and appreciate them sharing your content with friends. If they like the content, they’ll gladly take the hint.

I think The Blog Herald should take the plunge. More visitors will share and return if you provide easy links to share and save your stuff on the services they use. Let me know, I’d be glad to share with you some AddToAny stats.

I recently did break down and add such a feature, however, using addtoany.com and the AddtoAny WordPress plugin. The nice thing there is there’s just a single “Save/Share” button that expands when the visitor hovers over it, so if folks want to bookmark or share the content they can, but those who aren’t interested don’t get their neocortex’s assaulted by a bajillion buttons.

Still tracking to see if it ever actually gets used . . .

But I am not sure about removing the RSS Feed icon. That’s one icon that I can deal with having on my site (one of two that I have).