2009/3/4 Steve Rothman <srothman at fas.harvard.edu>: > It looks like they make it really easy for the webmaster to add some > great functionality to the site. But I'm wondering: > > ? ? How are these services making money for themselves? > ? ? Are there any privacy / security issues for the visitor to the site > or for the owner of the site? > ? ? Do the services work reliably and do they affect page load times > noticeably? > ? ? How difficult would it be to switch from one of these sites to > another, if a problem develops? > > I guess the alternative is to build this stuff oneself, like the Walker > did in the link below - but with the dizzying pace of new services being > introduced I like the idea of gadget that keeps track of all the latest > services automatically.
That was the attraction for me - there's no way I could keep up with the sites different types of users were using. The code is simple enough that you could do a 'search and replace' if you needed to, and it would be even easier to swap services if your site uses includes or templates. The links are actually stored on the related site (e.g. Facebook or delicious or whatever). I'm not sure how they make money - perhaps by selling aggregated user data? Good questions! cheers, Mia -------------------------------------------- http://openobjects.org.uk/
