Nearly every site has them those little like boxes and other social media widgets but to some of us they are pests here are some reasons why social media widgets may be destroying the whole internet experience.
Firstly social media widgets look great on a site but the may be doing much more harm than good to you the webmaster or to the more important visitor.
We put these on our blogs for one reason only and that is to gain more interaction via social media that we hope will bring more traffic to our websites as the more followers you have on twitter or other social networks the more visitors you will get to your site in a perfect sense world. But it does not work that way all of the time does it ? let me explain something about these little things that you may not be aware of but are probably caught by all of the time.
They remind you about social networking sites that you are trying to get away from in the first place and doing the same to your visitors. Remember that book about Kevin Bacon and the seven steps well someone should write a new version of it called 2 hyperlinks from Facebook. No matter where you are looking now their is a like us on Facebook widget or similar one but is this what you really want a like if so go out and buy some you can get 1000′s likes for about $5 if that is all you want from your site the same goes for twitter followers although I do not use such services as I find them a total rip off since most accounts are phony.
Social Media Widgets slow down site speed which is especially annoying when browsing on low end devices. Since the world has gone mobile browsing mad do you think that people are going to like your site after seeing it crash their mobile browser 5 times in a row while they were looking for a way to stop it crashing in the first place.
But alot of the time social media widgets are promoting sometimes unused social networking profiles. If you are not really a social person don’t use them what’s the point in promoting a never updated Facebook fanpage or dormant twitter account at the cost of true feedback and interaction via a website contact page or comments on blogs. Login to comment may sound good to some but if you are on a mobile loging into sites is not always an option since most mobile users don’t know about things like mobile password managers and do not want to save too much secure information on a device that could be easily ripped from your hand on a bus or left in a bar. People however do not easily forget their primary email address, name and be sure if they have a website they will not forget the url of it. But they do forget social networking passwords and when they go to your fanpage to like it they are not logged in the first thing on their minds will be to reset it and come back to your site to like it again, But in the process they are dragged back into the whole facebook daily duties of reading friends status updates and messages then somehow forget about your site in the midst of it all.
Now back to the widgets ruining the internet well it’s like this people now judge how well a site is doing by it’s popularity on facebook and not how it serves the visitor. People come to a site for many reasons maybe they are searching for the only planet that rotates clockwise which happens to be Venus if you did not know that before well now you do because that’s what websites should be about providing facts and not asking questions about who you are who your friends are if you are married, single,male,female have pets and your pets names,who you slept with and those are the questions we know they ask not to mention their own semi secret agenda.Because like the Planet Venus people though it was a beautiful earthlike planet but in reality it’s a Toxic Inferno just like social networks the deception is much the same it’s a fun place to play games, chat with friends find new one’s, be free to express yourself “Kauft nicht bei(m) Juden! – Die Juden sind unser Unglück” try that one on facebook and see what happens, Now that social media is getting people imprisoned should you really be giving it a priority position on your website ?. I am not saying that all social media widgets are ruining the internet and all social networks are a high grade of evil but one site is trying to take too much away from regular webmasters and is a burden on the economy simply because people are too busy talking about their boring lives, Slacking off Work, Having businesses thinking they are not successful if they don’t have enough likes on facebook because they are developing their own websites instead.
So it’s not Social Media widgets that is ruining the internet it’s this ridiculous obsession with website popularity on social media. Sometime ago I seen a video where companies do not have a problem paying for smartphones so employees can use social networking to promote their business but they never looked into the R.O.I for these devices such as the initial cost of the device and network charges how many hours much much are you spending indirectly on social media. I know I only bought my tablet so I could use social networks and read emails when I was not near my computer it’s not much good for anything else just like social media is not much use to my blog and why I don’t promote it that much here so call me anti social maybe you should become that way too so you can work on a better internet for all of us with less social media and more social interaction.
