I consider myself a "power user", relatively speaking, of the web...in that I know how to copy-paste URLs and titles into Twitter using all manner of computing devices. And I can even look up the author's Twitter account to ping them in the tweet. You laugh at that, but just yesterday I had a media professor tweet asking for my email address, even though it's listed several times on my blog and I can't direct-message her with that info until she follows me.
But I'm starting to find it inconvenient when social buttons aren't used. Maybe it's because I'm getting older...but partially because web developers are either moving too fast for me, or have no concept of graceful degradation. For example it is now impossible, from what I can tell, to provide a "right-click" tap on the New York Times website when you're on an iPad. That is, you can't hold to highlight text (which is helpful when tweeting the title of Tweet).
So call me a surrender monkey. Social buttons are the web-widget we deserve in the fractured development landscape.
Edit: I also have to dispute the OP's contention that the buttons are never used...blog posts of mine that get shared a lot almost always involve the Tweet button...It's easy to tell because I've configured the button to post the title and my name in a way that you wouldn't if you were manually creating the Tweet itself.
But I don't want to tweet the title usually I want to find a nice quote and edit to fit. If I can't and the site tries to editorialise me pasting to twitter then I will not tweet.
But I'm starting to find it inconvenient when social buttons aren't used. Maybe it's because I'm getting older...but partially because web developers are either moving too fast for me, or have no concept of graceful degradation. For example it is now impossible, from what I can tell, to provide a "right-click" tap on the New York Times website when you're on an iPad. That is, you can't hold to highlight text (which is helpful when tweeting the title of Tweet).
So call me a surrender monkey. Social buttons are the web-widget we deserve in the fractured development landscape.
Edit: I also have to dispute the OP's contention that the buttons are never used...blog posts of mine that get shared a lot almost always involve the Tweet button...It's easy to tell because I've configured the button to post the title and my name in a way that you wouldn't if you were manually creating the Tweet itself.