The one constant with the online world is change. Massive shifts in our use of online information happen more rapidly than most of us can keep up with. I need your input and help to gain understanding of your thoughts and reasons for sharing and/or commenting on items that you find on the web.
A Brief Background:
These ubiquitous Social Sharing Icons have been used extensively on most websites and blogs for several years. They make it fast and convenient to share the information with your connections and followers across social media. The numbers that are shown under most of these icons reflect the number of shares that have occurred over time. This is called “social proof” – with the assumption that low or no shares was bad, and high numbers indicated top quality content. There is currently some research and test results demonstrating that those share counts are actually discouraging you from sharing and high volume sites have eliminated the share counters. LinkedIn has turned off their counters on the publishing feature of their site. During this same time, reader comments on blogs have dropped off to almost nothing, leading many top blogs to turn off comments entirely. In order to gain as much information as possible on the impact of these changes I am asking for your help.
How You Can Help? Share your opinions on these questions:
The share counts on my social sharing buttons on the left side of my posts have been turned off for two weeks now as I test some of this with all of you. Comments are still available for you and I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on these questions.Please share this post with your peers and connections in any way you prefer so that I we can all learn from the largest group possible. You will be able to learn right along with me about the impact of social share counts and open comments area on blogs. The results are posted live.
You will note that I turned ON the share buttons at the end of each Poll question after you enter your vote. I also turned ON comments for each poll lquestion that is visible after you vote. Just testing everything possible to see what you prefer and use.