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On Stack Overflow, I see a set of three new badges: Announcer (bronze), Booster (silver), and Publicist (gold). Their common description is "Shared a link to a question that was visited by x unique IP addresses in y days".

Now, how do I share a link? Is this a harbinger of assimilation by Reddit/Facebook/whatever? The blog is quiet...too quiet...

There is now a blog entry for this. Later, many of the actual numbers in the blog post changed, like some of the requirements for the number of unique IP addresses and the time limits.

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psst.. hey buddy... psst.. let me tell ya a little secret..

what you see when you click the 'share' link

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    I see what you did there: the permalinks now include the logged in user's ID; that seems to be new. Thanks for the explanation :)
    – Piskvor left the building
    Sep 7, 2010 at 8:23
  • @Piskvor - What about SO? There is no user's id in the link.
    – Giorgi
    Sep 7, 2010 at 10:05
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    @Giorgi: There is, but only in links to questions, not to answers
    – Tobias Kienzler
    Sep 7, 2010 at 12:11
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    If people were to use these links to cross-link between questions, will this count towards thier efforts on these new badges? And, if it does, is that intentional / encouraged / discouraged?
    – DMA57361
    Sep 7, 2010 at 13:17
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    @Jeff, I'm a little disappointed in that answer. I too saw the link button under the questions, but my question would be where and how to use it? Are badges generated based on pasting that link into another SO answer or question, or external sites?
    – Jonathan Day
    Sep 18, 2010 at 0:38
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    @Jonathan: you can post the link on SO, or anywhere else on the Internet, or text it to your friends, or put it up on a billboard. It is not relevant where people encounter your promotional link. The key is that enough of them use it in a short enough time. Your user ID is part of the link, so the system will always know which visitors it has to attribute to you.
    – ЯegDwight
    Sep 18, 2010 at 0:58
  • @Jeff, dumb memes aside, that image could really use a circle or an arrow. The word "link" is only slightly more noticeable than the lightened rest of the image; it doesn't help that it's small and gray. I skipped right over it the first time I looked at this answer, because the real "link | edit | flag" links under the image looked more like content than the image did.
    – Pops
    Sep 20, 2010 at 15:07
  • @RegDwight: Thanks, but that's not strictly true according to the blog post. The link must be posted outside the StackExchange network for it to count. "...the tracked IPs must originate from outside our existing network..."
    – Jonathan Day
    Sep 20, 2010 at 15:08
  • Related: How this tracking is performed (embedding the user id in the link, if it wasn't obvious).
    – casperOne
    Nov 25, 2011 at 18:59
  • So if I use a link that is directed to an answer, does it count?
    – puretppc
    Jan 25, 2014 at 2:37
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A more detailed explanation is provided in the Stack Overflow blog post Announcer, Booster, and Publicist Badges for those of you unsure of the specifics of when/where sharing counts towards badges.

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