Social Overkill

My HP LaserJet 4L is one incredibly slow laser printer. But I don’t care. I paid $800 for it back in 1994 and I’m going to keep that sucker going till it DIES. When I upgraded my motherboard a few months ago I had to purchase a PCI parallel adapter because it doesn’t support USB!

I went to the Office Depot website to order a new toner cartridge for my 4L. I found it quickly and was about to add it to my cart when I noticed the area called out below by my fancy red arrow.

Is this an example of a company jumping on the social media bandwagon? Why would I want to send details of my toner cartridge purchase to Facebook or Digg? Delicious is along for the ride too, and maybe that makes sense if you want to save a link and either don’t have cookies enabled or are on a pubic computer.

This is an example of a large company trying like crazy to implement the cool new internet technology but not understanding how people currently use it.

But I decided to go ahead and test this cool new social feature from Office Depot. I mean, if someone considers me to be their friend on Facebook then I’m sure they will want to know where I buy my laser printer toner. That’s just how close we are.

I can’t wait to share more items with my Facebook friends. Imagine their excitement when I shop for replacement staples, double A batteries or super glue. I could be spending hours accepting all those friend requests.

But things don’t go as smoothly over at Digg. Check out what happens when I try to Digg the link to my toner of choice.

Digg checks the URL and reports it as SPAM! I wonder if Digg is blocking all incoming links from Office Deport for this reason? Which is sad because I’m sure a many tech savvy Diggers would be thrilled to hear that I paid retail for toner for a 14 year old printer. Tell me that doesn’t make the front page within minutes.

Nice job, Office Depot!