Ok, so in my last post I introduced the Meebo Bar. I thought it was really cool and it is, but I should have done a little more searching. I have found a few more media bars that offer a few different features and excel in different areas. In this installment I will be presenting to you the Sharebar by AddThis!, Wibiya and Skysa as well as revisiting the Meebo Bar. We will be investigating a few different areas that may be of concern to webmasters: Signup, Installation, Customization and Administration.
Signup
Of all the bars only one lets you use it on your site without the need to signup to their service. This would be the Sharebar from AddThis! I really like the option of not signing up for anything, that way I don't have to worry abut my inbox being inundated with spam. All of the others though have an easy interface to guide through the required signup process. The perks of signing up for all three social bars are the same though: Analytics and Customization (Except the Sharebar which can be customized without signup but doesn't have analytics).
Installation
The installation of all four bars are extremely easy, it is literally cutting and pasting very few lines of code. The easiest to install are Wibiya and Skysa with literally only a single script tag to place at the end of your HTML, thats it. The Sharebar is also extremely easy to install: one script tag and one div tag at the end of the HTML. The meebo bar is a bit bloated and actually goes against common practices, it requires a block of javascript just after the opening body tag and it requires another small piece of javascript just before the closing body tag. This makes the Meebo bar the hardest to install, but it is still pretty easy.
Customization
All four bars allow some degree of customization, but some allow more then others. The Meebo Bar allows for basic customization only, you can add and remove apps and thats about it. There are only about a dozen apps to choose from but only a couple are unique to Meebo. It does have an API to develop new buttons but it doesn't host third party buttons on its site so there is no central place to share these things. The Meebo bar has been running on my website How to Program, but I will probably be changing it later. I simply wasn't impressed with the Meebo bar after doing a little research. The Sharebar is only slightly better then Meebo, you can customize the buttons and the look and feel, but its customization must be done within the code itself with a special syntax, making it kind of tedious and error prone. The Sharebar doesn't support an API so you are kinda stuck with only the buttons that AddThis! provides, which is a lot but they essentially all do the same thing. Next on the list is Wibiya, currently it has about 20 applications for it's bar and roughly 30 themes. The themes can't be tailored but there are enough to satisfy most. Wibiya is currently running on this blog, it does it's job and overall I'm satisfied with it.(Switched to Skysa, it took all of two seconds to change it). The last social bar is simply the best, Skysa is an amazing piece of work, it has about a dozen apps and four themes. That doesn't sound like much but they host third party apps, so that list is sure to grow quickly. The four themes are really just there to get you started because Skysa allows for full customization of it's tool bar including how round your corners are and which background image to use. Skysa was simple to use and because of the customization it was easy to fit anywhere.
Administration
The administration for each bar was fairly similar except for the Sharebar, as noted earlier it takes code fiddling to have it act any differently. The other three though all have a fairly simple administration system at their respective websites. After you log in it's a simple matter to click and select which applications to display. The changes take effect to the bar immediately in all cases except for Meebo, the changes can take up to 15 minutes to reflect on your site. Although a 15 minute wait isn't long its just annoying to know that all the others can do this immediately. The analytics for Meebo and Wibiya are extremely basic, they count how many clicks per button. This information isn't completely useless but they could have put a bit more effort into it and gave me at least some browser stats. Unfortunately, Skysa wasn't much better. The analytics are built into each button so you will have to rely on the author to make those available.
Conclusion
So thats my short round up of social bars, I hope some of this was helpful. I would like to say definitely check out Skysa. They impressed and showed me the most promise. The other bars feel extremely limiting after enjoying the freedom of Skysa, but that's not to say that the others are horrible they simply aren't as good as the new kids in town.
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