A little while ago, ecib suggested that it might be useful if you could see the number of times you shared a particular user's posts. He said that this information would help him decide if he was following the right people, or if he should be following someone he wasn't.
It sounded interesting, so we decided to test out that functionality.
Starting today, when you go to your 'settings' page, you will now see a toggle for 'share-counts:'. If you toggle that to 'on', you will then see a count of how many times you've shared a user's posts if you hover over their name.
This is a test, so we will probably modify the functionality if we decide to keep it.
In addition, when you visit a user's page, in the 'stats' section, you can now see how many times you've shared that users posts. Click on the number it to see the posts that you've shared.
As always, feedback is much appreciated!
Happy 4th to the US Hubskiers!
UPDATE: I reformatted the 'share count' from a pop-up to an inline element.
Hey, this is cool, but I would suggest that taking ecib's train of thought to the extreme is the wrong way to use it. That is, don't use this feature to cull who you follow down to who you've shared most often; that way lies homogeneity and black holes and red-on-yellow-kill-a-fellow snakes. EDIT: not to suggest it's a bad feature by any means; actually I quite like it.
I think it'd be cool for discovery purposes. If you are lurking through the global posts and see some slightly familiar usernames, you could toggle over them and see if you have shared anything by them and what it was you shared. It would be nice if on any page when you scrolled over the name and the number came up, you could scroll over the number and click on it and be taken to the list of content you've shared of theirs.
For me, that is a secondary function. The colored follow/not-follow name indicators create a negative incentive to unfollowing people at any rate, much like other some social networks. Is it lame to feel guilt over unfollowing someone? Pretty much, but human psychology is what it is.
So far I'm liking it. I found a user that comprises roughly 30% of my front page regularly that I follow but see I only have shared 2 posts, while I've found a user that I don't follow where I've shared over a dozen posts (not even knowing that I shared one). A fundamental mechanic of Hubski is getting your good content from users you follow, and this info definitely helps (me at least) as there is no better measure of whether or not I like someone's links than if I decide to share them. This is a more accurate gauge of quality for me than looking at their recent posts page. What you you all think?