Social Media Integration plugin switch

[gfiedel]

I am wondering what would happen if I switched my plugin for social media integration on my WordPress site. For instance, if I have been using Sociable for a long time and have accumulated +1's, likes, shares etc. and then I switch to Flare or Social Stickers, what will happen to all my counts?

Thanks so much! I haven't been able to find any documentation on this.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

I think the way these social plugins work is they pull the +1 and Like counts from the social media sites.  That's why these plugins can be slow as they get the information from the other sites.  So, if you change plugins, the counts should remain the same.  At least, that is my understanding.

As an aside, I post the buttons on my pages but not the counts.  My limited testing suggests that my pages load faster without the counts.  I'd be interested in any other comments on this aspect as well.

Best,
Christopher

[vmialik]

Hi Gina,

A great way to think about this is: when you +1, like, share, or retweet content, it is counted in its one social network. So if you click (for example) Facebook share this article via your share plugin, your plugin does not count the share, but Facebook does, or Twitter, or Google+.  So you are free to switch between social share plugins until you find one that suits you best.

One word of caution for plugins such as Discus or CommentLuv, they have their own counters and likes, because they are proprietary to their own platform and so if you have been using one commenting system and you switch to another those may or may not transfer. But for things like Social Sharing Buttons type plugins. They just pull the data from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linked in etc.

You can test this with a tool like this: http://www.sharedcount.com/ for a URL

Hope this helps

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Vadim, have you tested the performance of these buttons with and without counts?  My testing suggests there is a performance hit.

Best,
Christopher

[vmialik]

I have not tested this specifically, but yes you are right Christopher some plugins load faster then others in general, find that works nicely for you. Some thoughts here on this: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/social-plugins-that-dont-slow-page-speed

Also there are features like LazyLoad that load these plugins after your content or load in the footer, etc.

For me the social proof of having the number of shares next to the post for example shows credibility of the information. I would still like to have that in most cases.

[gfiedel]

Thank you Christopher and Vadim. This is what I was hoping to hear. I like the idea that I'm not stuck with what I've got and am free to switch it up, but it was too risky to just play around with. I'm looking forward to checking out sharedcount.

I think it's pretty interesting that I couldn't find this information anywhere. Maybe I was approaching the search wrong.

Thanks again!