tweet this share

New from me on VoceNation:

A tempest broke out a week or so ago when it was discovered that Twitter “Share” buttons – those little things that appear below a headline or elsewhere on a blog post or article – were no longer displaying the number of people who had actually shared this. That was not a great move in the eyes of publishers who liked having those numbers easily accessible. And now it looks like it’s having a real impact as a recent study by Shareaholic shows usage of those buttons is down over 11% after the removal of the share counts.

This is where we need to stop thinking of Twitter and others as “social” networks but as “status” networks. Not “status” as in what someone is doing, but “status” as in “I’m trying to achieve status through the social currency of what I share.”

Source: Why Twitter’s Share Counts Disappearing Led to Decreased Sharing « Voce Communications