I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

PaulHoule

Amen! Plus those share buttons leak data with third party cookies and such, they're mostly a scam to skim user data from your web site.

operatingthetan

It's sort of cargo-cult behavior to add them to non big corporate websites. Just like adding superfluous chat bots now.

iLoveOncall

0.2% can be an OK conversion rate for some things.

ndegruchy

I've added a button that just triggers `navigator.share()`[1]. I know most users do the copy-paste dance, but I find this is a good middle ground. Adding functionality for my users, but not adding special social media share buttons. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...

evilturnip

Most people don't have an audience they would share it to if we're being honest. If there's a article/site I'd be interested in sharing, it might be to a slack channel or a text message, in which case I just copy/paste the URL.

mgiampapa

I use share buttons all the time on social platforms, and apps like Amazon that don't have any other way of deep linking. Lot's of people use apps that don't expose a link, share buttons are great and even better when they use standards like your OS's share functionality.

raincole

> The share buttons got clicked 14,078 times. That’s a 0.21% usage rate, which works out to about 1 in 476 visitors. In other words, people not only click share buttons, but do it quite often?

dlcarrier

See the rest of this comment to learn what dlcarrier thought of the article! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48561332#:~:text=Of%20c... Of course no one wants to use a feature that creates a huge link and throws in a bunch of disingenuous text.

einpoklum

> That’s a 0.21% usage rate, which works out to about 1 in 476 visitors. That's actually not low at all, and much higher than I would have expected for government website pages. Not to mention the _actual_ social sharing of mentioning pages to people you know who need the information on those pages.

broodbucket

I don't click share buttons because I don't know what it's going to do. I don't want something copied that says "Check out this Thing on this Site! <url>" because then I have to delete half of it at which point it's slower than copying the URL. If every share button had the same behaviour then maybe I would.

elpocko

I remember back when Wordle was popular, people said the "Share result" feature was so effective, it was the reason for the game's viral success. I can't think of any other example though.

klinquist

Nobody clicks share buttons to "just share links" But ... make it share something more useful and they might use it more. I author a Caltrain app, and if you are viewing the time schedule, the share button pops up the iOS share sheet pre-filled with "I'm taking train XX leaving <location> at <time> and arriving at <location> at <time>. Track my train <link>."

joshstrange

0.21% sounds low but my initial thought is "I don't know if they are making the point they think they are". Conversion rates are always pretty low. That said, I've never clicked on a share button mostly because: - I don't know what it will do, it's not consistent at all - It might add extra crap "Your friend shared 'Story Title' with you!" - It will probably try/want to add tracking crap I always just copy the URL and send it however I want to send it. People aren't stupid when it comes to sharing, they understand how to accomplish what they want, we don't need a dedicated share button. What we don't have, and hopefully never will, is the number of people who click the share button verses the people that copy/paste the URL which I assume 90% of people who want to share do. It's universal, it "just works". Clicking the share button means I'm at the mercy of the site operator, copying the URL puts me in control.

jdw64

0.2 %is quite significant, isn't it? My small website (www.makonea.com) gets about 90,000 visitors a month on average. (That's about 300 per day?) So that means a post gets shared about once every two days. Maybe I should seriously consider making my posts more shareable. And if I promote it on HN, I'd hope there's a 0.2 %chance that people would check out my site.

kxrm

Reddit is full of YouTube links with the `si=` param which indicates they clicked the "Share" button. All indicators are this article's premise is not true.

brikym

The user has to have an extra reason to use it. Share buttons or stateful URLs are great when user input is embedded. You have to add that extra user generated sauce or it's not worth it. Web games (like my redactle.net) will typically have a share button that allows players to share their score. Calculator tools often include a way to share a URL with all the fields filled. Youtube does it with timestamp links.

azhenley

Are the 14,078 share events from unique users? If not, the usage rate would be even lower (<0.21% of users share but sometimes share multiple times).

dewey

The point of share buttons in most cases is the tracking pixel that comes with it, not the share feature itself. Also when you work with real users, not developers who remove tracking parameters you quickly realize that share buttons are used and people complain about them if they don’t work, can confirm from my own experience.

franze

running my own experiment and the chatgpt button by now gets more clicks than the share buttons ie https://www.veganblatt.com/a/hafermilch-edeka (german)

frou_dh

The tapestry of share buttons were certainly novel and interesting like 20 years ago. They may be lame and 99+% ignored now but it's been a slide to this state of affairs.