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?

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

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

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

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.

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/

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

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 !