Local social: Social bookmarking links in the UK's top regional papers - Part 2

Yesterday I started looking at the social bookmarking features on some of the UK's leading regional newspaper websites, and also pointed out the excellent research that Louise Thomas has just carried out in this area. Today I want to continue with a look at the social bookmarking links on another 10 local press sites.

  This is...

The 'This is...' series of sites all of a similar social media set-up, with links included in a "This story" panel at the foot of the page. They sit below links to 'Email to a friend', 'Print' and 'Comment' on the story, and the services featured are the popular quintet of Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

My review 'basket' of 20 popular regional titles includes 5 from the 'This is' fold - Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Hull & East Riding, Nottingham and South Wales.

  West Midlands Express & Star
  Shropshire Star

The Express and Star features social bookmarking links at the foot of each article. There are six in total, to Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Fark, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

This is also the set-up for the Shropshire Star.

  Belfast Telegraph

The Belfast Telegraph follows the slightly unconventional layout adopted by the national Independent. The social media icons are in a panel offset to the right side of the article, at the top. The links are to Delicious, Digg, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

This layout style is highly unusual, and of all the 20 websites I looked at in this survey, the Belfast Telegraph was the only one to feature social bookmarking links anywhere other than at the foot of the article.

  Glasgow Evening Times
  Dundee Courier

Unsurprisingly, given their track record in my tests on video and RSS feeds so far, the websites of the Glasgow Evening Times and the Dundee Courier do not have any social bookmarking features.

Table of services

The table below indicates which newspapers link to which social bookmarking services. The 'Share this' icon indicates that the user has to 'unfold' a dynamic panel or click a button to reveal the links.

Next...

Tomorrow I'll be looking at some of the contextual help that these newspapers provide around their social bookmarking features.