Link sharing with ShareThis and others
How often do you send and receive emails containing cool web links, funny video’s, presentations, etc….
Sharing links; first it was by composing an email, then it was from an email feature in your RSS Reader (but then you can’t share links you find outside the reader), then it was from your social bookmarks (but the del.icio.us links for you only works if all parties use del.icio.us).
There are various ways to share links via; IM, surf and chat tools, a blog post footer, but this post is more about an easier way to send links to your contacts, and of late the browser seems to be the most obvious choice.
As a matter of fact I think lots of services should incorporate contacts plug-in, so when ever I come across a link I can easily send it to my contacts, whether I’m inside my RSS Reader, email, IM, social network, etc…
Of late we have seen lots of services and social networks pop-up that are designed to share links with friends within and outside of the network. The idea here is more on the ease of sharing links, eg. dragging them to an avatar.
As mentioned I want to be able access my contacts list and contact groups from my browser and drag in the link/s.
This is the idea of ShareThis (formerly share2me), it will harvest your contacts list from various services you use (or add them manually), and recipients can receive the links via email, IM, or a notification within the network itself, and even as messages in other social networks.
Now if you add your own profile from the available social networks or add your own email, you can remind yourself of stuff, why not add posting to social bookmarks, publishing to your blog, etc…
It doesn’t seem to have SMS notification, but how about Particls (formerly Touchstone) type of delivery choices like a pop up sticky note right there on your friends PC (I guess they would have to be registered with ShareThis for intimate delivery).
Only issue I have with ShareThis so far is that I can’t view my contacts list…they are using Plaxo for the contacts module (good partnership idea), so if I sign up I will be able to access my contacts. But regardless I still want a link to Plaxo within my profile or better still view my contacts within ShareThis.
Also when you share a webpage I’d like to choose from a drop down list of my contacts, as I can’t remember who I have in my contacts list…and of course contact groups would be great.
I’d like to plug-in the ShareThis button into my RSS Reader, just as you can into the footer of my blog posts, not to be confused with ShareThis wordpress plugin.
NOTE: not sure if you can share links with other ShareThis users, it seems you can’t as it really isn’t a social network yet, where you can add friends or see their profiles, or leave comments to a particular item and your profile in general…although it seems I can leave comments to one of my own items.
And of course you get an archive of all these links you have shared, probably want to tag them or search them for future retrieval…hope this is coming soon.
As long as you can install the button on any PC, you will be able to share links…I can see ShareThis maturing into a ultra handy product, I feel it will become another regular tool into my everyday toolkit, and that’s rare that a tool sticks to being used everyday.
I posted on a similar idea for a ping social network, instead of sending an email or IM, it sends a new item in you contacts user space (notification could be by email , IM, etc…).
The difference is that you can ping them as you publish a blog post and as you comment in other blog posts, ie. when you hit send your blog post or comment is published and at the same time you have also pinged your contacts.
Here’s a list of recommended links services…ShareThis shines as it has the killer feature of various delivery methods and sending to contacts that aren’t registered with ShareThis.
yoono
[ADDED 31/05/07: Yoono is a download app that seems to have the same features as ShareThis, ie. send to contacts that aren’t registered with Yoono, different types of delivery, and even posting to your blog…see comment]
Services more oriented to recommendation are Heeii and Blogrovr…me.dium, chatsum, others online and Reko recommend people. I guess most of the profile aggregators or lifestream type of services double up as expert locators that have people recommendation.
[ADDED 22/07/07: FeedEachOther has link sharing, as well as several lifestream services, such as ProfileFly and Comwat.]
[ADDED 30/07/07: Siphs]
[ADDED 21/09/07: Streamy : Social Network RSS Reader, lifestreams and attention groups]
[ADDED 21/09/07: Siphs : link blogging and sharing]
[ADDED 21/09/07: Google Shared Stuff and other common ways to share]
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Just allow me to mention that Yoono also has the “killer feature of various delivery methods and sending to contacts that aren’t registered with” Yoono : direct access your contact book from gmail, yahoo, hotmail, aol, lycos, rediffmail, indiatimes, mac.com, mail.com, fastmail, IcqMail, Linkedin, …
Direct posting to your blog on Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress, MetaWeblog, MySpace, LiveSpaces
Direct posting to your BuzzLog on Yoono pages,
And grabbing videos and images in one click…
Thanks for mentioning us !
Comment by Xavier — May 30, 2007 @ 8:13 am
John,
Good post and be glad to let you know where we are at with ShareThis development and upcoming features.
I’m unclear regarding desire to view your contacts list. ShareThis has auto-fill from the mashed up address books you created at registration (from all your various communication channels from which you imported contacts) so when your start to type in an email address, AIM screen name, MySpace friend, etc. you should see the name in the auto-fill drop down list. If you want to add an email address or AIM screen name just type it in, hit enter, then hit the green “+” next to the name in the recipient to permanently add it to the address book. If you want to view or delete someone from your address book, we have a simple editor in the My Account area and are working on a full mashed up address book editing tool so stay tuned on my blog (blog.sharethis.com) and I’ll let you know when the full editing tool is available.
Good idea to put ShareThis button in the RSS reader and we’re working on this feature as well. Here’s some scoop…. We have a working prototype out there with Google Reader that we haven’t told people about yet but you can try it out. Just hit the ShareThis button when you are reading a story in the Google Reader and it will grab an abstract and the URL and make that the sharable object.
We’re building a ShareThis publishing tool so any blogger or web page publisher can add a ShareThis button to their blog/web page or an object on the page like a video or photo. We have a simple button generator you can check out at http://sharethis.com/generate. However, there will be a full javascript programmatic solution for blogs and web pages available in the coming weeks.
Keep the feedback coming… as you can see, we’re listening and working hard to keep the new features coming.
Mike Blackwell CEO ShareThis
Comment by Mike Blackwell — May 30, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
Mike,
Thanks for the comments…
What I mean is being able to view my contacts list at my homepage and when I’m sharing a link.
I may have so many contacts that I forget who I have, so if I can display the whole list I may come across someone I want to send a link to that I forgot was in my list.
The auto-fill feature is awesome, but just say I want to come across a person I have forgotten is in my list.
And what about the contact group suggestion, not sure if this is at Plaxo.
Whoa, you say the bookmarklet works for an item in your Google Reader, kind of like the del.icio.us gordita bookmarklet.
http://www.memerocket.com/2006/11/05/gordita-delicious-tagging-for-google-reader/
Comment by Johnt — May 31, 2007 @ 7:06 am
Another thing Mike,
I have noticed people you have shared a link with can comment on your item page. The owner knows who commented as the email address of your friend will be displayed as the source of the comment.
If this page was anymore public, would this be a spamming opportunity for these displayed email addresses.
Comment by Johnt — May 31, 2007 @ 7:14 am
John,
We’ve found the average number addresses in a contact list to be over 200 because of the number of communication channels we store (AIM, various email, MySpace, Facebook, and mobile phone numbers). Although very handy, this makes for a challenging UI in the space available so do you want to see the whole list or see the list broken down by communication channel type?
We are already working on a contact group feature as well as a most recently used list so you’ll see these in the coming weeks as well.
Good point about email address listed on comments and this leads to a larger internal debate about whether to move towards making ShareThis users create a unique ShareThis specific identity or go with non-unique display names (stay with email address as login identity). Which do you prefer?
Finally, I just want to clarify that we use the Plaxo widget as an advanced email importing tool because this tool provides much import granularity down to the ability to chose which individual address to import. However, we do not sync with Plaxo in any way at this time. Thus, even if you use this tool, you do not have to sign up or use Plaxo when using ShareThis. Most use the Plaxo tool for Outlook importing. We will soon have our own easier to use Outlook importer in place. The majority of people registering tend to use the much easier full address book importers.
Mike
Comment by Mike Blackwell — May 31, 2007 @ 2:16 pm
Hi John, thx for the mention of Others Online. We’re looking forward to finishing up the product a bit more and launching.
Comment by Jordan Mitchell — May 31, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
Mike,
Not sure how to display a complete contacts list, maybe this could be a link to another window if people wanted to see their whole list…really not sure on design capabilities.
As I see it an item you share has a public URL, only this is not promoted within in the system, so unless you are shared this URL you probably wouldn’t know it exists.
Are you considering making ShareThis a social network where anyone can view a user and view their items, this seems inevitable to make it viral.
But in this case then when non registered users leave a comment on a Shared item it will have to list their name instead of their email address.
This means in the contact list for every email you will need a corresponding name.
Non-registered users would only be able to comment if they have been Shared a link, they would not be able to roam the social network and leave a comment.
You talked about revamping your ShareThis footer button, will it be feature packed like the Wordpress Share This footer button, and will it open so fanciful.
I’d like 3 options to choose from when I hit the footer button
- submit to bookmark services
- email, IM to friends and message to social networks
- post to blog services
http://alexking.org/blog
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=share-this
Comment by Johnt — June 1, 2007 @ 4:02 am
John,
We’re not planning on becoming a social network because that would break one of our trusts. Rather we’re trying to become a universal sharing layer for the web. ShareThis has to worthy of the trust of the users, publishers (source of the content like this blog), and the destination for the shared object, which may be social network. The publisher needs to trust that if you put a ShareThis button on your page or blog (which you should do by the way), we won’t change your syndicated content. And when we send or post to a social network, blog, or bookmark site, we’re not trying to re-route or disintermediate their users.
Your list for footer button options was right on and that’s where we are headed. However, wouldn’t it be better when you decide to share something to see your friends and address that you send to, and the blog, bookmark, and profile sites that you actually use rather than a list of 50 sites that you don’t use? To be clear… I’m all for Alex King’s solution to aggregate all the sharing choices into one button. I just want the ability to choose and save the sharing sites that I actually use so the next time I hit the one button, all I see are my choices.
Mike
Comment by Mike Blackwell — June 7, 2007 @ 6:12 am
Mike,
If I put that footer button on my blog can non ShareThis people use it?
Not everyone is a member of ShareThis, and I want anyone to send one of my posts to email, etc…just like Alex’s button.
In this case the footer button would only have an idea of what choice of services to show to the user if the user logged in via the footer button.
Now where is that button?
Comment by Johnt — June 7, 2007 @ 8:13 am