That Tall Dude.com

For those of you who haven’t hopped on board yet, SocialBrowse is a great way to share links.  Install is right into your Firefox sidebar, easy to close if you need a little extra screen space, but I find it very unobtrusive on my widescreen monitor, even with Digsby docked beside it.  It simply shows you links that your SocialBrowse friends have shared, providing the easiest way I’ve seen to find cool new things in the flow of my day.

Unfortunately, some people are abusing the process.  Sharing a link involves nothing more complex than clicking a button in the toolbar. This makes it easy for people to share a link for the SAME STORY on DIFFERENT SITES.  SocialBrowse was made to share links, much as Digg and Mixx and Reddit do.  And just as it’s good practice not to submit a link to Digg that takes you to Mixx or vice versa, it is also bad practice to share a link on SocialBrowse that takes you to a link sharing site.  Just stick to the site that the story comes from, if we want to share it elsewhere, we will.

This is not to forget that there are exceptions to the rule.  If there is an amazing discussion going on in the comments on Digg or Mixx, then I’d like to know about it.  But under no circumstances do I like seeing the SAME STORY in my SocialBrowse feed, going to 5 DIFFERENT SITES, NONE of which are the actual site containing the content.

I opened up my social feed online this morning to count ONE OF these stories happenings, as I’ve seen at least 3 occurences in 2 hours.  5 different links, about Coca-Cola being healthy for you, none of which took me to the story.  The links went to Mixx, Digg, Hugg, Care2, and Reddit.  Granted, each of these places then had the link to the actual story, but that’s an extra click I shouldn’t have to take.  You lost me right there.  I had an interest in that story, but not with an extra click needing to happen.

So, you know who you are.  Give me the link to the original location of the post I want to read, not Digg, not Mixx, not Reddit, not anything else.  You’re diluting the quality of the links being shared, and annoying me too.  I’d hate to have to unfriend you because of this, because you all still share some really great stuff that I want to see, but I’m not sure how much longer I can stand to see this multi-linking.

If you want to give SocialBrowse a try, let me know, I have 21 invites currently available, first come, first serve.  If you’re already there and want another friend, then add me, I’ll add you back. socialbrowse.com/profile/view/381/