ShareThis, a button for sharing articles on other sites, says it is growing fast

sharethisslogo012208.pngShareThis is a bookmarking service for social news sites and social networks that helps you easily share an item such as a blog post, on sites like Digg or Facebook.

You click on the ShareThis button beneath a blog article, and the button gives you a pop-out window where you can choose which site to share the article with — a range of social news sites and social networks. You can also install the Dublin, Ohio company’s browser bookmark, which will open the window of sites to share with. Screenshot below.

If you’re a web publisher, you can install the ShareThis button as a plugin for Wordpress and other blog platforms.

Although I’m not sure if this site can ever be a huge business, it’s doing quite well for itself in gaining pageviews.

sharethisscrn012208.pngMore than 27,000 publishers have installed it, including sites like AllThingsD (pictured), Mashable and CrunchGear. The company claims it generates more than 100 million monthly pageviews from more than 26 million unique monthly visitors — what the company means by “generates” is that sites that include its button get more than 100 million pageviews.

ShareThis offers publishers a tracking service so they can monitor where their users are submitting their posts to. The company says it has gotten a great response from sites so far, “thousands” have installed it, with more than 500 sites joining per week since the company launched two months ago, it claims. The button is generating great click-through rates for publishers, it says, although, they didn’t provide specific numbers.

ShareThis raised $6 million last year from Blue Chip Venture Company, Illinois Ventures, DFJ Mercury, Queen City Angels and RPM Ventures. Tim Schigel led Blue Chip’s investment in ShareThis and has since become its chief executive.

Next Story: Box.net offers easy storage, amid increasing competition
Previous Story: Ad Infuse takes on $12M more, builds market share in mobile advertising

Bookmark and Share
Photo of Eric Eldon

About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • Their button looks remarkably similar to the "Shared Stuff" button that Google offers (but does not promote widely).

    http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff
  • Tom
    There is also anotherone, AddThis.com. They are very popular
  • Jackie K
    If you use firefox, you have to check out www.shareaholic.com
  • Yes, Google is also using the Share Icon - which is excellent.
  • AJ
    You might also want to look at siphs.com, which takes a slightly different approach. Unlike ShareThis or AddThis, siphs.com gives publishers a new branded page that they can monetize, provides RSS feeds of what's shared (popular & recent) and lets publishers customize the email that are generated from the widget.
  • Robinson
    Sharethis is unreliable and does not include every service like AddToAny does. Check out http://www.addtoany.com - it beats them all imo.