Ask HN: Using social media buttons - good, bad, necessary evil?

[javahava]

I run several content education sites, and i've placed facebook like buttons, tweet, and +1 buttons on them for the past few months. While they gather a decent number of likes (a few hundred), the actual facebook referral traffic i get is fairly low (several hundred visits per month). sometimes i think it's just clutter and a waste of space. then i read articles about them (as being necessary for having a social media strategy), see them on other sites, and have doubts. Do you guys feel they're worth it?

[samlev]

Honestly? Probably not much in terms of getting new traffic, but people seem to like being able to click 'like' or '+1'

If nothing else, I guess they are a vague and inconsistent metric about how popular a piece of content is.

[jamesbritt]

They're great for the sites like FB who want to track people, not so great for people who don't like this sort of tracking.

I see most of them as clutter, especially if they're part of some obnoxious floating bar.