Recently, I jazzed up my Firefox. I downloaded an ‘add-on’ for my tool bar. It allows me to share any address in my address bar, and therefore web page, with over 10 social networking, online  bookmarking, and online collaboration tools, in just two clicks.

Ease of access has been demonstrated across the literature as being a prime factor of whether a user will use a service, technology, or system, and therefore, it is a pre-curser to any collaboration or participation in the Web 2.0 and social media world.

Personally, I don’t want to have to go to my Delicious page and have to log-in every single time I find a good link. I also don’t want to have to navigate to three different pages if I want to share a link via Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious. Although,  I do hope whoever invented the tab feature got a nice bonus.

A small, colourful green box now sits in the top right hand side of my screen, allowing me to easily share a site, or collaborate with others on a topic, with the click of a button. I customized this tool to not have an icon in my address bar, as my RSS feed button was making things a little crowded.

I must admit, I am much more likely to share a great website or link with others with my sharing tool so readily available. Previously I may have only shared a link on one social networking site, but now I usually share to a number because of the little amount it takes.

As I have discussed in other posts, people have less time in their daily lives, therefore these sharing tools that are just a click away make it more likely they will take the minimal amount of time it requires to share often incredibly useful information.