Oliver Reichenstein takes on the tendency to put social media sharing buttons all over a site in Sweep the Sleaze. This part in particular is something I’ve thought about as well:

If readers are too lazy to copy and paste the URL, and write a few words about your content, then it is not because you lack these magical buttons. If you provide excellent content, social media users will take the time to read and talk about it in their networks. That’s what you really want. You don’t want a cheap thumbs up, you want your readers to talk about your content with their own voice.

By the way, in case you haven’t seen it — Oliver’s team just did a gorgeous redesign of their iA site. Be sure to check out his post Responsive Typography, which goes into some of the details.