'Net Features : sharethis

ShareThis Speeds Sharing with FastShare

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:02:00 GMT

Popular social sharing widget provider ShareThis is rolling out a redesigned version and a brand new feature in FastShare which lets users spend more time sharing and less time logging in to social networks/services.

Thanks to support for OAuth (an open standard which allows users to share private details stored on one site with another site without having to re-validate credentials – typically username and password), ShareThis is enabling visitors logged in to any of the sites within its publisher network to automatically see their FastShare options.

Web masters that have implemented current ShareThis widget (using buttons.js code) will be able to access FastShare and the new design elements within 48 hours.

ShareThis Social Tool Gets Big Update

Mike Phillips — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:59:00 GMT

ShareThis, the popular social sharing widget, has released an update that is currently in beta. The biggest upgrade is the ability for users to share a page's content to more than one destination simultaneously. With a single click, users can share your content via email, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, LinkedIn and more. This added convenience for the user could be significant - anything that makes content sharing easier should also be on publishers' radars.

Also included in the update is the ability for users to share content without ever leaving your website and the incorporation of custom themes and colors. In the works are updated plugins for Wordpress, Blogger and Typepad. ShareThis claims nearly one million websites use the tool.

You can see an example of the new widget functionality below, and vist the ShareThis website for more details and to test it out.

ShareThis Upgrades, Gets More Interactive

Mike Phillips — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:12:00 GMT

ShareThis, one the Web's leading content sharing widgets just got some new upgrades, and they are substantial.

Stream is a real-time view of what's being shared across the Web through the ShareThis community. Think of it like Google's scrolling real-time search results box or a stream of Facebook updates. For now, it's only on the ShareThis website, but will soon be a customizable, embeddable widget for websites and available with an API. See how ShareThis Stream works.

New share buttons are more customizable. Publishers can now remove particular networks from the ShareThis options for users. Don't want your content shared through Twitter, but prefer Facebook? That can be accomodated. It's a nice way for publishers to control where the conversations about their content is taking place, or even to run A/B tests to find what networks are of most value.

Related content on the Done screen. After a user shares content, ShareThis will now display related content from your site on the user's screen. It's a nice way to keep the ball rolling, and hopefully get users to keep sharing your content.

"See what your friends are sharing" will also be featured on the Done screen. If users click on these links, they will be directed to the ShareThis Stream, filtered by your content.

Social sign in - users can sign in prior to sharing via their Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo! profiles. It's a growing trend on the Web and facilitates sharing well beyond the ShareThis community and strictly personal contacts.

Integration with Twitter OAuth allows for a more direct way to share content with Twitter.

In addition to these updated ShareThis is also planning to include Google Buzz in the near future, among other features.

A few quick notes about ShareThis, and why publishers should actively promote the service on their websites:

According to their website, ShareThis reaches more than 400 million users across 130,000 different websites.
What might be most significant about social sign in is that it could open ShareThis to an entirely new set of users - one that is accustomed to sharing content and likely doesn't yet know about or use ShareThis. While it's a powerful tool, it has yet to catch on with many Web users. That could change very quickly if an audience as large as Facebook catches on.
ShareThis can be integrated with Google Analytics and has Influence Insights, their own analytics service. Even if your content is not spread widely through ShareThis, these analytics can show where your content has the most potential to be shared. That's good to know.

Click to sign up for the beta release of these new features and access to the API.

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Essential Wordpress Plugin: Add To Facebook

Mike Phillips — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Plenty of plugins are out there to help readers share your blog content, but perhaps the new Add To Facebook plugin for Wordpress is the most significant. For starters, consider Facebook's more than 250 million users.

The plugin is extremely easy to add if you are using one of the latest versions of Wordpress. Simply download the zip file and upload it through your Wordpress administration panel. You can then choose your settings for the plugin under your Wordpress "Settings" section - either a text-only link or a small image and text link, and whether to add the link to every post.

Of course, other plugins like ShareThis can do the job of getting content on Facebook - as well as plenty of other social media sites. But for many users, simply seeing the Facebook name and icon can provoke quick sharing with the world's largest social networking site while a ShareThis (or similar) widget can appear to involve more work from a user perspective. So, why not use both? It seems to work just fine, although you might need a few tweaks to get each plugin to exist side-by-side.

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ShareThis Widget Update Rolling Out

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:47:00 GMT

Website publishers using the ShareThis widget will see some improvements to the tool rolling out over the coming weeks.

Improvements include shorter widget load time for better page load performance, sign-in support (for Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) for increased engagement, some personalization features and analytics.

The updated widget will also provide users with recommendations for sites that will share other top content from your site.

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