• ShareThis

  Participated · Series C · Mar 2013

  ShareThis offers publishers sharing widgets, developer tools, an analytics dashboard detailing social sharing trends, and advertiser tools for targeted campaigns across its network. Its proprietary SQI (Social Quality Index) ranking metric lets publishers compare performance to peers, and the company plans to develop an SQI version for mobile. To unify web and mobile experiences, ShareThis acquired Socialize and will make Socialize’s app solution the new default, bringing in a Social SDK that adds likes, comments, shares and activity feeds to apps. Socialize had grown to 800 apps across 67 million unique devices and just signed its first enterprise contract with Warner Bros.; it had earlier reported 150 live apps and ~10 million end users last spring. ShareThis serves 2.3 million publishers, its tools reach 95% of the U.S. Internet audience each month (over 200 million uniques), grew revenues 155% in 2012 and expanded headcount from 50 to 95. The company plans international expansion in 2013, including European offices and a further headcount increase of two to three dozen. ShareThis offers a single widget that enables readers to share posts by email or by posting to social networks such as Digg, Delicious, MySpace and Newsvine. The widget is compared in the article to AddThis and is used across publisher sites. A newly released version adds publisher analytics so site owners can track usage. The company reports the widget sees over 100 million views per month from more than 26 million unique visitors after launching in November 2007. Despite strong usage, ShareThis has not yet generated revenue. CEO Tim Schigel said the company expects to start generating revenue in 2008 and is exploring options from paid services to advertising. ShareThis provides a sharing button and browser bookmark that opens a pop-out window letting users post articles to a range of social news sites and social networks. Publishers can install the ShareThis button as plugins for WordPress and other blogging platforms and use its tracking service to monitor where users submit posts. The company says more than 27,000 publishers have installed the button, including AllThingsD, Mashable and CrunchGear, and that sites embedding it receive more than 100 million monthly pageviews from over 26 million unique monthly visitors. ShareThis reports rapid early adoption, claiming more than 500 sites join per week since launching two months earlier and noting strong click-through rates for publishers. 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 and has since become the company’s chief executive.

No current team members are available.