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Email an article to a friend feature
Are there plans for "email an article" for a friend aside the print feature? I'm constantly wanting to email eXtension articles to friends.
I’m would be happy to see this feature implemented.
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There is now a share/save widget available on the public site. It uses http://www.addtoany.com/ and shows up on article, FAQ and event pages. You can read a little more about it (and other features we released this morning) here: http://about.extension.org/2009/11/19...
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Inappropriate?Can you describe a little more how you would expect this to work?
I know that on many web sites where this kind of feature is implemented, the format of the email itself is very "form letter" and often comes from a "no-reply" address - and it's a very poor substitute for a personal note from your colleagues and friends with link(s) of interest. I know in my sharing, if I email, I'll copy and paste a link - and include it in a personal note.
How would you envision this working, and be an effective way of sharing?
I’m curious
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I agree with Karen that the Email to a Friend link is a good idea. I see Ben's comment below as the most relevant objection to it (having to open your email to find an address because you don't have all email addresses memorized and eXtension doesn't have a copy of your email book); however, some websites can link to your email account. I know on Facebook you can link to your Yahoo! account to search for friends by their email. Is this a common technology?
The ease and convenience of having the "Email" button on the site encourages people to use it. Even if they have to look up an email address in their address book. And the "Email" button serves as a prompt to perform this very action. I emailed an article featured on Southern Living's website and was able to include a personal note.
It seems like some new ideas may have developed since this discussion began 11 months ago. I think it would be worth revisiting!
Thank you! -
Inappropriate?Both JCPenney and Consumer Reports have the type of email link that I think works well.
Here is a Consumer Reports article (I think you can access if you are not a member)
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/ap...
Also, Consumer Reports had the Share link that I really liked also, they provided options for Digg, and Stumbleon which I think is handy too. -
Inappropriate?The Consumer Reports example is very helpful - thanks for including a site example!
For the discussion - here's a highlight of the "personal connection" issue that I was referencing:
Here's the email from CRO:
Sender: sendtoafriend@cu.consumer.org
To: jason.young@ncsu.edu
Subject: Something interesting I found on ConsumerReports.org
Cc: jason.young@extension.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Jason Young has sent you this ConsumerReports.org link.
Here's something I thought you might like to take a look at. Compare Coffeemakers With Our New Ratings
Click on the link below, or copy and paste it into your browser:
http://www.consumerreports.org:80/cro/appliances/kitchen-appliances/coffeemakers/coffeemakers/overview/coffee-ov.htm
Visit the Consumer Reports.org home page for more information on hundreds of products and services
we test and rate, at http//www.consumerreports.org/
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I've always been puzzled on the personal level - whether that's better (skipping the secondary goal of harvesting email address - and taking advantage of the peer contact for marketing/branding) than having something like this:
Email this Article
Technically, the latter depends on a proper configuration of a person's computer (that mailto: links will open the email client). The former has better styling, allows for branding, etc. But it's not personal. It's more about the site itself capturing data, than facilitating sharing. (Again, not that that it wouldn't be a benefit to a site and the site's owners, and potentially a benefit to the users, but I'm thinking out loud about the investment/maintenance cost vs. benefit to user vs. likelihood of use).
I’m contemplative
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Couple of notes: I had to leave off the 'http' and the 'www' in the email this article link because Get Satisfaction autoformats urls
Also, definitely not ignoring the "Share" link - those would present a good return on investment, not only in that it utilizes the reader's personal networks, but it reaches into the communities where they are. The questionable (in terms of investment and ongoing monitoring/maintenance and the ROI) is more with the email part. -
Inappropriate?Hmmm...I don't think I need it to be personal so much, as easy. At some level, I think it's personal just by me thinking of someone to send it to and sending it. Without this feature, it's just one more step for me to open my email browser and it keeps me from passing on information to others when this link in NOT there. I'm indifferent to which way I like better ex. 1 or 2 ---o.k. actually, I will vote for 1 since it's a bummer when you are at somone else's computer and their email window pops up or the configuration is wrong.
Also, I find NOT having this feature is somewhat inconsistent with the attitude of extension - you know collaborating, sharing. Just by having the email or share button on top, I think it says a lot about what we want someone to do with our information.
Those are my thoughts. I don't know if they help you weigh the cost vs. benefit at all, because I don't know if this is an easy thing to do or not, but I do ultimately think it says something about eXtension by having or not having these capabilities...
I’m interested in hearing where this goes...as you ponder the benefits vs. costs.
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I know that the "not" part is by no means intentional. There are a lot of demands and so many hours in the day. There's a lot - that both the site can facilitate, and our content creators to be a part of, at extension.org itself and in other communities where people are - that we can/should do to promote collaboration and sharing. The key is appropriate collaborating and sharing, and email is in that iffy space right now as to whether it's "appropriate" sharing (email is just so easy to get twisted into a spam engine, it takes a disproportionate amount of effort and monitoring to prevent that).
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Inappropriate?I'm not in favor of creating an email form for the reasons given by Jason. Another issue to consider is that Consumer Reports (for example) doesn't have my email address book. Since I don't memorize email addresses, I would have to open my email program, find a contact, and then cut and paste the address to their form.
If we were to provide an email link, embedding a mailto: link makes more sense.
I’m Ben and approve this message
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Inappropriate?Thanks for all your responses.. I think the share link with the boomarks, etc... is a step in the right direction and would be well placed alongside the print button. I can understand needing to manage the maintenance issues with the email - something I didn't even understand was an issue (and I'm still not sure I understand all the issues, but that's o.k.)
The only problem I forsee with the share link vs. email link is that a large portion of our COI, intended to be mainly Master Gardeners, will probably be less likely to use these technologies because of the learning curve associated with using them and their stage in life. They are a large part of the base we hope to draw to the site, so that's why I imagine the email (in some form or another) being a better feature than the share bookmark feature. (On another note, maybe another way to address these issues is to skip antiquated ways of doing things and look at teaching people how to use these technologies through short video or moodle?)
Thanks for taking the time to explain your position. I don't fully understand all the issues with the email feature, like spam, maintenance, etc... I don't want to spend too much of your time dealing with this feature. I will say that I believe it would be a useful feature for our COI, but maybe not the most important for eXtension or at this time, so I trust you guys to do what you think is best.
I'll let you get back to work.
Thanks again,
Karen
I’m o.k. with the direction you take this - having voiced my opinion.
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Inappropriate?Check out ShareThis - http://www.sharethis.com/ I would love to see this on the Extension site so I could share via e-mail and my social networking sites! I share horse links all the time with other friends and would love to be able to do it with the great information on the extension site. Thanks!!
I’m confident this can be done easily
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Hi Matt,
Thanks for the suggestion. We agree there are some great benefits to adding a service that makes social network sharing easier, and we are in the process of evaluating it. (We need to make sure that we understand the what kind of user tracking information these sites collect and that it is consistent with our privacy policies.) -
Inappropriate?Hey Ben that's great news! I hope you all are able to use something like ShareThis so we can share the wealth of information!
I’m glad to get a response so quick
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Inappropriate?There is now a share/save widget available on the public site. It uses http://www.addtoany.com/ and shows up on article, FAQ and event pages. You can read a little more about it (and other features we released this morning) here: http://about.extension.org/2009/11/19...
I’m happy
The company says
this answers the question
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Thank you for continuing to work on this! Great job!
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