Bookmarking Chicklets are Useless

First there were trackbacks, then came bookmarking chicklets, and now Tweetbacks and retweet buttons! Aren’t we going overboard?

What I fail to understand is why will anyone share your content? Unless you write VERY well all the time, there is no reason to believe that someone will share your post on a different platform. I firmly believe that the onus of sharing your content lies squarely on your shoulders. While you should tweet, digg, bookmark and share your content, don’t expect others to do so for you, because honestly, no one will.

Another thing I have noticed is the bookmarklets themselves. People tend to go overboard with these bookmarking chicklets.

The above is an actual screenshot taken a very popular website. Do we REALLY need so many sharing options? I’d also like some science behind this, for instance:

• How many bookmarklets should one ideally have?
• What order should they be placed in?
• Is it better to have the icons placed inside the ShareThis button or outside individually?
• What about click-rates on the buttons themselves to check if anyone’s actually clicking on them or not?

The other thing that I believe is that those who regularly share content on Digg, Delicious, Google Reader, etc. already have those bookmarklets on their browser toolbars and don’t normally need the ones you provide.

What do you think? Has the time come to do away with bookmarking chicklets? Or you think many of your readers actually use these and you have seen a traffic spike since you have started using them?