I see where you are coming from, and it's certainly a choice up to the individual blogger. However, I wouldn't underestimate the laziness of the average visitor. Making it easier for them to share, definitely means more traffic.
For example, this article of mine has 1.2K Facebook Likes and 179 retweets: http://stacktrace.it/2012/01/07/10-consigli-per-interagire-c.... Of these, 400+ were made from the AddThis widget. It's hard to say how many would have bothered otherwise, but it'd probably be a smaller number.
Also keep in mind that they can act as social proof. Sure, a series of 0s look needy and desperate. But when you are good at promoting your content on your own, these counters may actually give people more confidence to share the content themselves.
Comments
I see where you are coming from, and it's certainly a choice up to the individual blogger. However, I wouldn't underestimate the laziness of the average visitor. Making it easier for them to share, definitely means more traffic.
For example, this article of mine has 1.2K Facebook Likes and 179 retweets: http://stacktrace.it/2012/01/07/10-consigli-per-interagire-c.... Of these, 400+ were made from the AddThis widget. It's hard to say how many would have bothered otherwise, but it'd probably be a smaller number.
Also keep in mind that they can act as social proof. Sure, a series of 0s look needy and desperate. But when you are good at promoting your content on your own, these counters may actually give people more confidence to share the content themselves.