I have always hated social media buttons. What surprised me about them was how everyone thought you needed them. There is also poor metrics for them, on your ow

I have always hated social media buttons. What surprised me about them was how everyone thought you needed them. There is also poor metrics for them, on your own site (or a client's site) there is really poor visibility on who has clicked those links. You would think that if they were that valuable people would at least know who clicked them but they don't. Also the craft of redesigning the buttons annoys me. How many designer-years have been spent redesigning the Twitter bird? This activity completely goes against basic UX principles but you cannot tell designers the truth about that. Remember page counters? I think a 'Predator vs Aliens' style sequel to social network buttons is needed where you can see x million people have viewed this page but 0 people have shared it on StumbleUpon...