Accelerators: The Social Media Shortcut

Little has been written about accelerators, even though they provide a great way for fans of social media to more quickly and easily share interesting content through their favorite sites. Accelerators save time and effort by reducing the number of clicks required to tweet or share links through social media, like Twitter and Facebook.

In simple terms, an accelerator is a tool for speeding up computing tasks. As it applies to social media, accelerators provide an easy-to-use shortcut for sharing content without the need to download or install bookmarklets. Accelerators are particularly useful for users who share, or want to share, content often.

While more websites every day come equipped with simple ways to share links and articles, the vast majority of sites still does not provide these shortcuts. And that’s where accelerators come in handy.

For example, Nokia issued late last year a press release in Hong Kong to notify its users that it did not need to initiate a charger exchange program in China and Hong Kong. The press release’s webpage does not provide a “share” button, so sharing this news without using an accelerator would require users to copy the link, open a new browser tab or window, go to Bit.ly (or another URL shorterner) and finally post the news for their friends to see.

With an accelerator, you could simply right-click the already-open browser tab, select where you want to post the news directly from the shortcut menu, and voila! The screenshot below illustrates how simple reposting is using accelerators.

To find the accelerators that are of interest to you, simply right-click an Internet Explorer 8 browser window and click on “All accelerators” and "Find more accelerators". You will then be able to find many of your favorite sites to post to. The sites will be added to your right-click shortcut menu in just a couple of clicks.

In addition to posting and sharing news, accelerators provide a number of other practical applications to make web surfing easier and faster. For example, you can:

• Map and locate an address on Google Maps (or other)
• Define a word or phrase on Wikipedia
• Email a link to a friend
• Translate a word or phrase with an online dictionary
• Much more!

So, if you’ve been hesitant to jump on the social media bandwagon because sharing is just too cumbersome, consider using accelerators and in just three clicks, you’ll be posting your favorite content for all your friends and followers to see!

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