Introducing the Click to Add Me button
November 6th, 2008 by niksmitConsider for a second please, the RSS feed. What has made RSS (Real Simple Syndication) such a hit?
Is it that it is “Really Simple” (no, turns out there are half a dozen variants) . Ground-breaking technology (no, it’s plain old xml, fetched like a regular webpage). Is it because RSS readers are so good? Probably not - in my opinion, they’re still merely “ok”, but they do the job.
What made RSS such a hit on the internet was two things - great utility, and being universally understood. Standardizing on that little RSS icon 
was critical to helping people understand the great utility that RSS offered.
Today, we dare to try and start something in that same spirit.
You have many web profiles - places you interact on the web. To know these places, is to better know you, and to have opportunities to connect. But how do I find out where you hang out? If you’ve got a retaggr profile, that’s super easy. I can just find your card and have a look… if you happen to have embedded your card in your site. But not everyone does that - some use the Retaggr chicklet 
, others a custom Retaggr Widget, and some sites have problems adding script or iframes.
What is needed is some consistency. An icon that’s universally understood to mean “Take me to this person’s profiles!” - just like we all understand that that orange square brings us loads of interesting stuff to read (when we should be working).
From today, all Retaggr users can grab one of these buttons and post it anywhere. It links through to a new page that lists all your profiles all at once. For sites that support it, we provide a “1-click connect” button so that a visitor can immediately add you as a friend on that service (or subscribe, follow, etc.). Your card, with all its rich content, is there too. You can put this button anywhere, and your profile will always be easy to find.
We’re calling this “ClickToAdd.Me”. We think it’s easy to understand, and rather snappy. (And to be honest, also quite like the geeky factor of using a .me domain name like that). You can view your page at this easy to remember url - http://clicktoadd.me/yourRetaggrUsername
ClickToAdd.me is part of retaggr - you don’t have to do anything extra. The profiles you’ve configured will always be up to date on this new page, as they are in your card. Just grab the html code for the button and embed it elsewhere.
We hope you like this feature! As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Nice idea but it still doesn’t work on wordpress.com which is a shame as there are a lot of people on wordpress.com But then I’m not an html programmer so I could be doing something wrong. I just cut and pased the code into a text box.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Hi Martin,
Murphy raised his head again - there was a slight gremlin this morning with the copy and paste code, which meant the image had the word “undefined” at the end of it. If you copy and paste the code again now, it should work just fine, or you can just remove that word.
You should have no problem installing on wordpress as a normal widget. If you do, give us a shout again via the contact form, and we can take it further.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I had a problem with the code as well but I figured out the problem & fixed it. But glad you guys fixed this, really love it.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Thanks so much for doing this, I’m going to give this a go right now on the Blogger Nerd Stalker site.
November 7th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Sounds like the famous add this, no?
Its a great idea, thanks for trying to improve the features of retaggr.
Since i find out retaggr, my site is retaggr enable
Best regards,
jopicar
November 8th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
[...] ambition? Nik Smit describes it very well on the corporate blog. Like a RSS button has become a standard for subscribing to a site feed, the [...]
December 5th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I’ve had this in my WordPress for some time… they used to have a WP Plugin…not anymore?
December 5th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
@Tutivillus - Wordpress plugin is definitely still available - just access your site on http://www.retaggr.com/Tools , and you’ll find the download link off there. Shout if you need help.
December 11th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Nice feature and very handy. Should also snap up the domain stalk.me
Any chance you can also add the favicon to this page for manually added sites and services?
On a related note if you later add a website, do manually added sites get converted to the automatic one? (which would also mean they would appear correct in the addme page.
My badge for absoblogginlutely has the right icons for geocaching, but the clicktoadd just shows generic icons.
http://clicktoadd.me/absoblogginlutely
December 13th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
@Absoblogginlutely - thanks very much Andy - those issues are now fixed. No - there is no automatic upgrade from custom profiles to built-in services at present.
December 13th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Awesome - thanks for the quick response