Is not being blogged about!

The celebrated playwright and wit Oscar Wilde once quipped: “A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.”

Anyone who has ever struggled with the top button on a tuxedo shirt knows that observation is not only witty, but true. It may be a doubtful proposition, but if Wilde were alive today, he might work at Yahoo! with a lot of other clever people. And if he did work here he might toss an epigram like this over his cubicle wall: “The simplest link between publisher and audience is a well placed Yahoo! Action Button.”

Quite.

You’ll find Yahoo! Action Buttons at the top of this page. They’re free, easy-to-implement, interactive social media tools for anyone who creates content on the Web.

These buttons encourage your users to:

• Bookmark and share your content on del.icio.us
• Send your content to their friends, partners and customers via email
• Blog about your content through their Yahoo! 360 accounts
• Print your content to keep and share with others, easily

Action Buttons are the quickest way for your users to spread the word about your content, products and services—far quicker than coming up with a witty epigram about it. True, people may say unkind things, but as Wilde said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Publishers currently in the beta program can access Action Buttons through the new Publisher Services tab in the secure account interface, but publishers outside our Network are also free to use these tools. Like Yahoo! Publisher Network ads, you implement Action Buttons simply by copying and pasting the HTML code that we provide. For the java-witty (and java-adventurous), we offer several hacks that allow you to customize the buttons to fit your site’s look and feel.

Hackers and publishers interested in learning more about social media tools should check out the Social Media Tools Group on Yahoo! Groups.

Although Wilde would probably have said it more eloquently, we like to say that Yahoo! Action Buttons can turn your users into evangelists!

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor