Old School Design and Debloggification for Maximum User Experience

Michael Martine has a great post on changing your blog experience to be less…well…
“bloggy” or “blog-esque” or “blog-like” and the like.

4. Debloggification

Debloggification is my made-up word for removing those elements from the design of a blog that give it away as a blog. These are things that people who “don’t read blogs” don’t want and don’t need:

Comments
• Social media sharing buttons
• Prominent RSS icons (I’m not saying don’t use RSS feeds, I’m saying keep the icons very discreet)
• Blogrolls
• Post times (depends on what kind of site)

5. Oldschoolification

Since I’m making up words, let me make one up for what happens when you substitute your bloggy features with old school features: oldschoolification. For people who don’t read blogs, try these:

• Email-a-friend capability
• Email newsletter (use Aweber to send blog posts by email plus much more)
• “Bookmark this” links
• “Print this page” links

Check out the rest of this old school blog design post.

While I realize 16 Share This icons are a bit of an overkill, I wonder if Facebook and 2 others can be helpful to a segment of your readership. I would love to do an A/B test to determine the effectiveness of these usability recommendations.