That Bottom Junk

The lawless world of the Internet has always employed a slower version of Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest" than the real world of business. Whereas in modern business, if a product or idea isn't popular, or inferior, it more often than not fades away into obscurity. The Internet works in a similar manner (Pets.com, Friendster, ICQ, etc.), but at a much slower rate--not to mention the fact that any dead service or idea can come screaming back to life at any second (Napster). I see this lack of competitive elimination all over the web, but right now the best example of it lies at the bottom of my news articles.

Around the same time, or shortly after, that RSS feeds really became popular, other online services were created to sort of piggy-back on the idea. People suddenly began subscribing to blogs and writers, and then sharing articles with friends. Then websites like Digg.com came around, allowing people to share articles and then comment and rank them. Not a bad idea, until all sorts of other services doing essentially the same thing popped up. Now, instead of a website having the normal "E-mail this article"; "Print this article"; and the occasional "Digg this article" link, it's got a slew of other services. You have the option to "FARK" something, "StumbleUpon" something, or "Redd" something.

Because no service is emerging as the clear victor (and other services keep cropping up), websites are forced to include everyone out of fairness. Sites are going to such extremes that they can no longer fit all the little icons along the bottom, causing them to include the "more..." button. Not only is it all confusingly unnecessary, but it's also ugly design-wise since not every logo is of the same quality. The Del.icio.us logo is hideous, especially next to the Facebook or Digg logos; the same goes for Fark. Media websites that feature large amounts of articles and features aren't always going for the most aesthetic design, but junking it up further with all these little icons (not to mention the ridiculous amount of comments at the bottom of every article) is just a mess.

The best way to fix this is to take all of them off entirely, forcing the user to instead get a toolbar plug-in for the service of their choice. Not only will this make things cleaner, but put the control over the service in the individual's hands (especially if their article-sharing service of choice isn't listed). It will have to happen eventually, as services slowly disappear, go bankrupt, or become victims of corporate buy-outs. News sites need to stop jumping on every online trend, and instead wait for the users to sort it out all through competition.