This is another test post to try out these “social sharing” buttons that provide links to social bookmarking services and enable users to share links. I’m sure you’ve seen them around, they’re pretty ubiquitous: those Digg, Reddit, Twitter Retweet, Facebook Like buttons. Blog posts and articles have them somewhere near the top or bottom, and the reader can click the icon for social network of choice if he wants to share the article to other people.

Now, as this is a semi-private blog (kept private only by author refusing to publicize it, and not through utilizing WordPress blog privacy settings), you’d be wondering why I’d be needing the service at all. Well, there’s really no harm in trying it out. It’s a fancy piece of code, anyway. Does a geek need an excuse? Besides, the knowledge might come in handy.

I’ve excluded the fancier social sharing toolbars (the persistent security leaks that you find hovering at the top or bottom of your screen when you visit a site) from this demo. I still have to double-check if WordPress.com will allow me to insert them, as most of the ones I saw require Javascript. Plus, this post will get too damn cluttered.

ShareThis enables the reader to post to a huge number of social networking and link sharing sites. It does require registration, which sucks. Here’s the button:

Yes, you are not blind. There is no button. WordPress.com strips out the <script> tags. And apparently ShareThis does not give you a vanilla HTML version. So much for compatibility, eh?

Testing out the TweetMeme shortcode. Now this one was a hard one, because the TweetMeme site will only provide you with JavaScript options, which rules adding it at first glance. I had to dig through the WordPress forums for this one. What’s annoying is that the shortcode is basically undocumented. Right now the button is displaying a 404 code, and I haven’t figured out why (TweetMeme says the crawlers can’t find the URL). It must have something to do with my blog privacy settings, or the post still being in draft mode, but hell… the button is there. (Editor’s note: yeah, it had something to do with the post being in draft mode. Published it and now it works fine and dandy.)

Moving on to the Facebook like button. You can get the code from their developer site. Very useful, if you’re hosting your own WordPress installation. Dammit.

GetSocial is pretty friendly and basic. The code to be pasted is also massively lengthy. I also added their WordPress.com-friendly implementation of the Like button.

AddThis recommends that you paste their button code into a sidebar widget, but as I’m only enabling this feature for this single post, I decided not to heed that. What can I say, I’m a total bitch when it comes to following instructions.

AddToAny is another popular option. What I’ve noticed is that it’s got customization options for Tumblr, which might attract you people who are obsessed with yer tumblarity. They have a bookmarklet for one-click integration with WordPress.com, but as I’m going for the no-frills, no-installation, plain copypasta power method, I refused to go with that one. Just make sure to click on the no-script option under More Options.

What makes Social Marking a bit different from the others is that its primary purpose is to help you, as blog post author, whore your site out through submitting the link to social bookmarking and web directory sites. For a fee, they can even do this automatically for you through a mass posting feature. The Share button is a secondary service, methinks.

Rounding all these up, most of the services have quite a comprehensive listing of social bookmarking and networking sites. I don’t have the inclination to do an in-depth comparison of the services right now. Anyway, you should be set if they’ve got Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Delicious and StumbleUpon. The rest are just bit players, and the major ones should be able to drive traffic to your site if needed. As long as you’re using a WordPress.com blog, these JavaScript-phobic share buttons should have your readers’ link-whoring desires satisfied.

[tweetmeme source=”http://twitter.com/adunaphel13”]