A Survey of URL Sharing Debris

As a loyal follower of Tufte, I believe in removing all unnecessary junk and debris from the visual design of a website. (The layout for this blog is a preselected template from Blogger; don't hold it against me). I'm going to point out a trend I'm noticing everywhere, and you will either start being irritated by it, or disagree with me. I call it URL Sharing Debris, and it is best described with examples. I surfed to random websites to collect a few samples.


huffingtonpost.com


Here's your classic example. Since it's too hard to copy and paste a URL, the user is provided with approximately 8-10 icons to share the URL.


indecisionforever.com


At least they realize the icons detract from the content and gray them out.


www.dailymail.co.uk


Since most users won't know what the icons mean, this example adds labels.


youtube.com


More space is wasted on the sharing section than on the video control. Am I the only one who knows how to copy and paste the URL displayed in my browser?


failblog.org


Finally, a site that makes fun of the sharing links.


scm.jadeferret.com


In my quest to find the worst offender, I came across the above winner.


Final words

I think a lot of site developers responsible for this are simply copying popular sites who started this trend. Putting a Digg button on your site does not make it popular. It needs to be popular in the first place.

It is difficult to fit content on a page. It is difficult to design clean aesthetics. I believe this fad will eventually die, and join the graveyard with webrings.