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[rcjordan]

Hell, perk, I count 26 on one of your sites. I'm putting them on my sites but have culled my list down to 15. I'm thinking that's still too many.  Sites are plain vanilla travel webzine format and some of those seem to be more relevant to blogs (technorati, for example).

[nutballs]

I just us a badge from addthis.com

[rcjordan]

Yeah, but is it seeing any action? Particularly among the lower-tier DOFOLLOW group?

Addthis is a possibility, but I've converted the 15 I have to a js function and plan to integrate them with a TellAFriend script (perl popup) that grabs the referer and title.  I get pretty good activity on that TAF and figure I might as well try to beg a few links.  The negative, to me, is primarily that all but the top 6 are useless clutter.  If I put the full 15 directly on the originating page, they'd also add 23k of load but I think I can circumvent that by throwing them to the popup.

[perkiset]

Hey RC - very little at all. Much more a perception thing than anything else.

Since I've slowed down posting I've lost readership - which actually doesn't bother me that much.

[rcjordan]

>perception thing

Agreed. "No, honey, this ISN'T a crap site. See, it has one of those Facebook link thingys so people must be using it."

I think I'll cull the list and use it to beg for real links during the TAF process.  Hmmmm.... wonder if I have any of those 1990's site award icons? Maybe slap a couple of trophies and blue ribbons on there, too.

[rcjordan]

update:

Oooh, nasty. Remember to nuke those flash cookies, boys & girls.

>I just us a badge from addthis.com

Suit: Clearspring Violates Consumer Privacy on Disney, Warner Brothers Sites

"According to the suit, Clearspring targets web surfers who visit affiliate sites and sets a tracking device in those users' Flash players. According to the suit, when users try to clear their browser cookies, the Flash player restores them, allowing Clearspring to "harvest ... consumers['] personal information for online marketing activities."

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/08/clearspring.html

=============

It was apparently the AddThis tool that was doing the dirty work. I can never bring myself to trust hosted apps and I never installed it on my sites.

"Clearspring makes the ubiquitous AddThis tool, which enables users to share links via e-mail or social-networking sites. According to the report from Berkeley, Clearspring has resurrected cookies for AOL.com, Answers.com, and Mapquest.com."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20013672-261.html