Oh boy, have I got some neat stuff for you today – GetSocial 1.03 is ready, and it’s jam-packed with new stuff, go get it now!
What is GetSocial?
GetSocial is a program I’ve made, that will generate social bookmarking toolbars for your blog or website within seconds! Because it makes pure HTML code without scripts, GetSocial is the ideal social bookmarking solution for WordPress.com bloggers. Oh, and it’s also absolutely free!
What’s better in GetSocial 1.03?
Add to Twitter
I’ve considered replacing the Ma.gnolia button with either Twitter or Yahoo! Buzz, but apparently there was nothing to consider: Twitter it is! I’ve decided to go with the following twitting format: “Title @ Permalink”.
Character limit handling
Twitter has a 140 characters limitation, so I’ve designed GetSocial to handle long inputs when necessary. Realizing that your link is the most important bit of information, the title will be automatically trimmed if the total length of the message is too long. If there’s only enough room for 5 characters of title or less, only the permalink will be sent to Twitter. Note that your permalinks will never be trimmed, even when the link itself is longer than 140 characters.
Inspired by the Twitter thingy, I’ve also added auto handling for Digg (which has a 60 characters limit for its title field).
Permalink verification & Automatic error correction
Okay, I’m officially sick and tired of this bug in WordPress.com where you get the permalink all messed up if you copy it from the edit window (the PLEW bug). The first thing I did with the new version of GetSocial was to add a permalink check feature. This (optional) feature pings your website while making the toolbar, and makes sure that the permalink you’ve entered actually exists.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to solve the permalink bug because WordPress.com generates error pages, so if you’ve got the domain name right, there is no (simple) way for the program to know that the post address is correct.
This is why I’ve also added a special algorithm that detects and autocorrects permalinks that are affected by the PLEW bug. This is a heuristic algorithm, but tests have shown very high (>95%) rates of success in detecting and repairing affected permalinks.
Support for CSS effects
If you’ve got the CSS upgrade from WordPress, you’re going to love this! With GetSocial 1.03 you can easily add special graphic effects to your GetSocial buttons, simply by pasting some CSS code to your blog.
For example (Internet Explorer only):
(Hover your mouse over this toolbar and see what happens)
CSS Code:
#primary .getsocial img {
filter:gray
}
#primary .getsocial a:hover img {
opacity:1;filter:alpha(opacity=100)
}
Add the above code to your blog’s CSS, and your GetSocial buttons will appear in B&W. When visitors to your blog will hover over them with the mouse – they will change to full color. There are tons of other effects you can make, but if you want to support browsers like Firefox you can only use alpha effects (you can find an example at the bottom of this post).
Text links
In additional to the regular buttons, GetSocial is now capable of producing a text-only version of the social bookmarking toolbar:
Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine
Better support for Mozilla Firefox and Google chrome
Your toolbars will now have tooltips for Firefox/Chrome in addition to the previously available tooltips of Internet Explorer.
Code and image optimization
I’ve managed to remove a few extra bytes from the images GetSocial puts in your blog, and there are also 5 new mirrors for the images. Some tweaking I’ve done also slightly reduced the size of the GetSocial executable (so this time you’re actually getting more for less!)
As usual, I’ll be absolutely delighted if you’ll click either one of these buttons (preferably both!):
Hillel Stoler (and other cool stuff) 
i noticed this was originally posted in 2009. Are there currently any mac options available? Thanks in advance. :)
Yes! check out GetSocial Live (You can also read a bit about it here)
Still many might be waiting for a Live Writer plugin for this
Hillel,
I am unable to even boot the program on my computer. I get an error message from windows “The Application Failed to Initialize Properly (oxv0000135) Click on OK to Terminate the application”
I am running XP. Thank you for your help
You need to install Microsoft .NET framework.
Run Windows Update or get it here.
I was able to use GetSocial just fine ten days ago but am getting an error message with both the new version and the previous version under Windows XP Home Edition V 2002 SP3. It reads
“GetSocial has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
Hi Hillel,
Thanks for this. It looks like a great tool, but I’m having problems with it. When I download it and try to run it, I get a Windows error that says this has stopped running and it’ll close. I downloaded that Microsoft script you linked to in an earlier post, but when I tried to download it I got a message that says it’s already installed on my computer.
If you could offer me any assistance in installing this, I would great appreciate it.
Thanks,
Rhymes
Can you send a screenshot of the error?
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
The first is while it’s still trying to download, the second after it’s stopped. This happens after I’ve downloaded the program, extracted it and clicked on the GetSocial green arrow. I’m running Windows Vista.
Looks like a Vista issue…
How about trying one of the older versions?
Hi Hillel,
I tried all of the versions and nothing worked. Is there another method to get this to work? I really want to use this on my blog.
Thanks,
Rhymes
Hi,
Thanks much for this very valuable utility!
Two suggestions:
1) Would it be feasible to allow customization of the lead-in line? For example, I’d like “Post a link to this post on your social media site:”
2) In the case of twitter, it would be good if the permalink would go through a shortening service such as bit.ly. Bit.ly already has javascript utilities (bookmarklets) that do this that perhaps could be incorporated.
Thanks for all the great work,
Paul
Hi Hillel,
Thank you for this great tool. I’ve been searching for a social bookmarking tool that supports twitter and this looks like the closest thing.
The only suggestion I have is making this as a plug-in for Windows Live Writer. WLW is the most popular blogging tool for Windows users, and plugins work very well with it. There is a social bookmarking tool for WLW available for download from the Live Gallery, but it does not support twitter and the last release was way back last year.
It would be terrific if there were such a WLW plugin available. I think you could make some money selling it as well.
Once again, really appreciate your great work and offering this tool for free.
Sounds interesting, I’ll check WLW out when I have some more time :) + Thanks!
Saw this at Raincoaster’s blog and loved it but I’m at a .org site and don’t think it would work . . . not in a widget anyway
Nice stuff.
~m
Argh! What about mac users?
I’m afraid that using mono is all I can offer Mac users at the moment.
Other leads I found:
one, two, and three.
I second the suggestion to center or make it an option. And I donated, purely because that Twitter button is teh ossum!
Thanks for your donation!
Looks like 2:0 for center vs. left alignment :)
Superb, Hillel
Will keep using it as always, great tool!
Just dropping by to let you know
Furl is closing and being taken
over by Diigo here is the link
to the article Welcome! Furl Users
I thought I would mention something
about this since theirs a Furl button
for Get Social and the button is
pretty much useless because Furl
users can NO longer save their
bookmarks to Furl.
My work is never done :)
Thanks for the info!
Thanks a lot for this! It’s a great help. Love the twitter!
I have a couple of suggestions for a future version
of Get Social.
1. Suggestion:
It would be nice if we could have the option for the
position within the Get Social interfase instead the
default align left. it’s not really a big deal because
I just replace “Left” with “Center” because it looks better
on the blog when the buttons aligned to the center.
2. suggestion
It would be nice for a future version release to have
the permalink replaced with a Tiny URL or any other link
shorting service.
Thanks again for the wonderful Bookmarking application.
Teck,
Thank you for your suggestions Teck! :)
You’re welcome!!! Hillel,
This is great news and a fast release thank you, The twitter button looks awesome!!! :)