Share Openly | Hacker News Reader

Share Openly

werd.io

87 pointsbenwerd15 comments

Is there an inverse to this, more on the publisher side? I find myself wanting to cross-post more as social changes, and would like to be more systematic with my OSS projects and company work as well. Seems like campaign mgmt SaaS, but I never feel inclined to go explore that market and your site feels better somehow.

e.g. I write a short summary for Twitter, slightly longer for mstdn, longer still for FB and full length for medium or a markdown readme. If I have media, include where possible.. incl primary screenshot/social preview selection, or multi-screenshot. Or video. Email support++

I see the value mainly as a time save, but also quality checker eg for staging w/previews, so the simplest version of this could be a static page that just help prepare the content.

It gets me thinking about managing/remembering logins, aggregating stats and responding to comments, etc.. I suppose CORS would kill this for the more proprietary channels. Should be APIs for the good ones.

And throw some AI in for good measure: during composition, let me start with what I have and fill out drafts for the rest. For responding to comments, maybe autosuggest short responses for common FAQs, or help me build FAQs as I go.

Sorry, don't mean to hijack.. haven't seen this being handled well.

In the indieweb community they like to do this and have invented the term "POSSE" for it (publish on own site, syndecate elsewhere). I like the style - the source of truth is something you own, and there's some tools they've made to automate it.

I'm not active enough on social media to have a need for them myself so can't offer any personal recommendations but it might be worth checking out.

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Thanks!

> Social media has evolved over the last year, yet nobody has “share to” links for Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, etc

I wonder how many people actually use those links? My understanding was that they’re primarily a data collection tool for the social networks themselves. Having your code run on every website is extremely useful for ad targeting.

anecdotally they are not used much. Sharing is different and does not involves using social network tools, they are just links to social media networks you need not use their trackers for that. Displaying fb/twitter likes is a different thing altogether and would require their trackers.

Do you have usage stats for such tools? A while ago, share buttons were everywhere. A year or two ago, I looked in their effectiveness, and I vaguely remember that they were not used that often, especially since browsers allow sharing to apps.

I, uh, will soon!

In all seriousness, I think it's true that those buttons mostly are useful as reminders that you can post / share elsewhere. Which is another reason why moving on from the "share to Twitter" / "share to Facebook" paradigm from 2009 is probably a good idea. There's a whole open social web out there that people need to be encouraged to explore.

> nobody has “share to” links for Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, etc

I've always seen these buttons as a spyware and as a a way to get "engagement" at all costs, so it doesn't surprise me that Mastodon doesn't have them as it isn't based on such a disgusting business model.

As to why Threads doesn't push them, I wouldn't be surprised if changes to browser privacy controls mean that their spying potential nowadays has been reduced to a level where it's no longer worthwhile.

Hate to be trashing someone's well-intentioned attempt at making something great, but to offer a counterpoint: I'm not sure this solves a real problem?

If I'm a social media user on any of the websites this tool supports, it means I'd have a tab open for it/an already logged-in client within reach and it would always be quicker to copy/paste the current URL into it and post there rather than find/type my instance URL in the share widget and go from there (also, this would fail if I'm only using a client app and don't actually have a browser session on that social media website).

Totally fair! This is an experiment - we'll see what comes out in the wash. The biggest impact I'm hoping for is to encourage more sites to remove their "share to Twitter" buttons.

Good on you for trying to clean up the internet. Btw, also consider https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s... which would open the native system share UI (which may actually include any native client apps the user has installed).

> Totally fair! This is an experiment - we'll see what comes out in the wash. The biggest impact I'm hoping for is to encourage more sites to remove their "share to Twitter" buttons.

My bet is that your reason for building this widget ("The biggest impact I'm hoping for is to encourage more sites to remove their 'share to Twitter' buttons") is misaligned with what web owners want (publicity, exposure, discoverability, engagement) which you get by using the largest megaphone. X

I'm not sure if the goal is to not let people post on Twitter/X, but rather to not have a webpage with a share to Twitter button, to FB button, to Mastodon button, etc, but to have one button and when you click it, opens up the full list.

I see it almost as a way to do the share menu that mobile phones have. I tested the Share Openly button on my phone and it not only opened Threads and Bluesky much faster than the share menu on my version of iOS, it also added not just the URL but the title as well.

I don't like this. I like apps with deep linking and sharing via plain URIs.

Put a social link button to every single social media website even if you have to put 20 buttons and share some stats on 1) how many times a person reading the article clicked on one of the buttons 2) which were the top 3 buttons clicked?

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