Is there any benefit from rolling-your-own set of social media 'like' buttons rather than using a pre-packaged widget, such as that provided by AddThis? Are there any downsides from using out of the box services?
Out of the box services
- may go out of business
- their servers may go down
- they may not be responsive when new social media sites appear and their widget doesn't include them
- they may not be responsive when existing social media sites change their APIs in a way which breaks the widget
- you have a lot more control over behaviour and appearance
Of course rolling-your-own may be a lot of work, particularly if you're the one changing your widget because someone changed their API.
answered May 5 '11 at 11:16
-
-
These are all valid down sides, but what if non of this happens? Assuming everything is working correctly, is there any disadvantage? – Roy Jun 17 '16 at 6:48
-
Only the fact that you are limited when it comes to appearance as to how the services choose to display the widgets. – paulmorriss Jun 21 '16 at 13:30
