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I just noticed that the link to Twitter is no longer under the Favorite star of any Question across all my StackExchange accounts.

  • Was this an oversight ?
  • Is Twitter being removed ?
  • Is there another form of Question/Answer promotion being done or in the works ?
  • May we use Twitter independently ?
  • I think the twitter option only appears under certain conditions. There was a post on Meta.SO on it but I can't seem to locate it currently. – JNK Jun 20 '12 at 19:58
  • the post on metaso was about removing it from under answers you provided, I didn't think it was regarding questions. – jcolebrand♦ Jun 20 '12 at 19:58
  • I used that button all the time too – Ben Brocka Jun 22 '12 at 19:49
  • @BenBrocka I miss the button already :-( – RolandoMySQLDBA Jun 22 '12 at 19:49
  • I've tried to click it 3 times today – Ben Brocka Jun 22 '12 at 19:57
  • @BenBrocka It's like Twitter withdrawal. It's also like trying to turn the channel after using a TV remote for 20 years. – RolandoMySQLDBA Jun 22 '12 at 20:16
  • BTW, I made a feature request about this (sorta, I hijacked @jcolebrand's): meta.stackexchange.com/q/136760/166936 – Ben Brocka Jun 27 '12 at 11:55
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Was this an oversight ?

I think this is just an "improvement" that's still in the experimentation stage.

Is Twitter being removed ?

Well, possibly. The metrics don't support it being used on a regular enough basis to be helpful, as I understand it.

Is there another form of Question/Answer promotion being done or in the works ?

Yes, they are tweaking the process. See: But I don't wanna share

May we use Twitter independently ?

Always. It's just been a button to help you out.

3

Was this an oversight ?

No, this was intentional.

We ran some analytics and found that very, very few people made use of those share buttons. And while I'm glad you found them useful, considerably more people actively resented them.

Since they weren't really working, weren't really popular, and were cluttering up every question we removed them.

May we use Twitter independently ?

Of course.

Our data does show that a lot of our users like and use Twitter (they just don't like or use the buttons).

Copying a url from the link popup into Twitter (or Facebook or G+) is equivalent to using the old share buttons.

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The Announcer and Publicist badges are still awarded when you share this way.

  • Do the buttons show the usage as low (relatively) on non-SOFU sites? I share on UX/CogSci all the time, but I rarely consider sharing from SO due to the type of questions. They're stuff you find when you need it, UX/ect has answers that help even if you don't have this exact problem – Ben Brocka Jun 22 '12 at 19:50
  • @Ben - The ratio of share button usage to all usage was about constant across the network. Some sites have more overall social traffic than others (UX is higher than average), but the ratio didn't really vary much. – Kevin Montrose♦ Jun 22 '12 at 20:04
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    What data lead you to the conclusion that they were "actively resented"? – Aaron Brown Jun 24 '12 at 21:33
  • @Aaron I'm guessing he is referring to this on MSO – Jack Douglas Jul 25 '12 at 12:32
  • Too bad, I like to tweet my answers and find it incredibly irritating to have to cut and paste the link, type a description, etc. Sharing to fb/twitter is a pretty standard feature. – Aaron Brown Jul 25 '12 at 14:22
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The sharing buttons were added back in: Add social media sharing icons to the “link” popup.

Click the Share link below and post to share it; question or answer!

  • Started using it yesterday. Thank You !!! – RolandoMySQLDBA Jul 26 '12 at 11:28

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