DarrenBarefoot.com

Our findings show that its a low % of users who dont like the bar and its typically people within our industry who feel the same way you do. However the vast majority of the ow.ly social bar users find value and utility in it. We feel we’ve created a useful tool and here’s a bit of info on it: http://ow.ly/socialbar

On the topic of opt-out, we cant be responsible for the practices of others but have made it incredibly easy for anybody viewing an ow.ly link to remove the bar. In the case of 99% of users of our tool this is perfectly acceptable.

That said, with such a low % of users having issue it’s likely more trouble than its worth to create a standard for people to adhere to for removal of the bar.

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Darren Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 8:32 am

Dario: Thanks for your comments. In truth, HootSuite’s offering vis-a-vis the bar is a little different than the other tools. In your case, it’s really framed as a feature, and (at least to my thinking) a key aspect of your product. So it’s not surprising that your users–who have adopted the product already knowing about the bar–don’t object to it.

That differs, I think, from the vast majority of bar implementations, which are tacked on as new (and sometimes surprising) functionality from existing sites.

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Personally, as heavy web surfer/power user/linker/blogger/whatever you want to call me, I find no use for these bars whatsoever. And it’s telling that, so far, the only people I’ve seen defending the toolbars during these controversies are people affiliated with the sites that generate them, i.e. those who have something to gain from them.

For the most part, we users have little or nothing to gain, and lots to lose to inconvenience and confusion.

I use Digg sparingly, for instance, and if I want to Digg something, I’ll do it at the site. If I create a link on Facebook, I want people to go to the page, not a framed linkbar version of the page. If I use a shortened URL (which I only do on Twitter, since it’s necessary there), I want to create one that redirects cleanly, not with a linkbar, and if I click one, I want it to provide me the same courtesy.

The thing with all these bars is that they should not be opt-out. They should be opt-in. For the user. Maybe even for the target site maintainer. (I currently have a script that automatically kills the Diggbar for people visiting my blog, and may soon install a more universal one for any incoming link that shows my site to people in a frame.)

It’s fine that ow.ly gives users a one-time opt-out, as far as it goes. But that’s like each individual junk mail sender saying I can opt out of their junk mail — it puts a big load on me to get rid of something I never wanted or asked for.

Plus it’s not really one-time. It’s once per user, per browser, per computer, as long as you maintain your cookies. If I’m on another computer in my house, or a public machine, or I use another browser or another user account, or a mobile device, or clear my cookies, or reinstall stuff, I have to opt out again, for that one service. And again for other services, playing whack-a-mole whenever I encounter such a bar.

And I do: my first task when I encounter a framed toolbar from any link is to kill the bar, before I look at the content of the page, because (a) I have yet to find a toolbar that gives me any features I want, and (b) too often I’ve had the bars screw up navigation, so if I click links within the framed page, then kill the bar, I go back to some previous page rather than the one I want. Oh, and I can’t see the real URL I want to copy to make a link.

Less obsessed users than me might not care, or notice, but I notice for them, because then they send me links that don’t go to the original site, but to a linkbarred version.

So the only thing these toolbars have done for me, since About.com and others introduced them years ago, is piss me off. And they’re doing that more and more. For me, they offer a guise of being helpful while really being corrosive to the Web’s usability, to benefit the bar-generating company or organization instead of me. They are, to my mind, a step back, and a trend that deserves to go away.

I’ll do my best to hasten that process.

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The solution is simple. Bring back .

:-)

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