[scribkin] Bookmarking Tag: Why ShareThis?

Bookmarking Tag: Why ShareThis?

March 24, 2008 – 10:18 pm

I switched from using AddToAny to ShareThis today. But let’s back up. Why am I using a service like this anyway? Well, personally I don’t like the “social bookmark” banner at the bottom of a lot of blogs - I think it looks cluttered. However, I do use a bunch of tagging services, so I think it is valuable to have something there for convenient tagging and sharing.

Enter AddToAny. I am not sure how I chose this one originally, I think it just sprung to mind when I decided I needed a single-click solution. Initially, it was nice — it let me customize the color, and it popped up quickly. Also, it supported a dizzying number of bookmark and sharing services. But when I added the SnapShots WordPress plugin, it initially wanted to add a SnapShots hover over the AddToAny button, and it added hover items to a bunch of the links inside the AddToAny pop-up. I resolved the issue with the button itself, but it still wasn’t quite right.

I couldn’t find this acceptable. So, I set out to find a similar service that perhaps implemented things in a different way that would require less work on my part to maintain. I found two more services, AddThis and ShareThis. However, a number of blogs that I read (specifically Laughing Squid), use ShareThis so that is what I looked at first. Fortunately for them, ShareThis already had a plug-in for WordPress and configuration was a cinch, and I like how it has a tab that can be used for emailing/messaging a link without having to go to a different web page. As a bonus, ShareThis seems to have really nice tracking reports built-in!