ShareThis, a startup that provides a single widget with the same name, has raised $15M in a Series B round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. That brings the company’s total financing up to $21M after a Series A round in 2007.
The ShareThis widget is akin to the AddThis bookmarking widget we use here on TechCrunch at the bottom of each post. Readers can use it to share posts with others by sending them through email or by posting them to their favorite social media sites (Digg, Delicious, MySpace, Newsvine, etc). The newest version of the ShareThis widget, just released very recently, gives website publishers the ability to track usage as well. We currently have the original version of the widget installed on CrunchGear (haven’t had the chance to upgrade yet) and it works quite well.
The company claims the widget experiences over 100 million views per month from over 26 million unique visitors; this only after launching in November 2007. These are impressive stats, but the company has yet to generate any revenue. CEO Tim Schigel says this should start in 2008 although the company is still exploring options ranging from paid services to advertising.
That’s one expensive Widget!
It’s a viral service and they are collecting a lot of data who is sharing what that can be also utilized at some point
I’m thinking there’ll be a search engine or digg like service (voting up a story would be accomplished by sharing it) in the future. These types of services are always trying to stay on top of the latest trends, and ShareThis has exactly that, especially if their numbers are accurate. It wouldn’t take much for them to organize all the data going through their service and allow users to see what the hottest or most talked about stories.
Maybe now they can add a way to let publishers add additional sites and services to their api.
I’m glad to see that. They have helped me anytime I’ve had any issues with their wordpress plugin. It’s not perfect, but I havent found anything better.
this an excellent widget.It just makes sense. SOme widgets are just junk.
$21 million for this? For something with no clue to generate revenue? (and please don’t compare this to Google)
Bubble, anyone? Company with zero revenues, no obvious revenue plans, with a single-function product, raises $21M.
Can you say 1999?
The “pop” will sound different this time, but it’ll still be loud….
This widget is junk, tried to install and import friends several times, never works, there is nothing worse than wasting time installing something that doesn’t work or is too complicated. Message to Sharethis……..Give Up
Tim and Mike – congrats on the huge raise. I think you’ve now raised more money than all other Web startups in Ohio combined! Good to see you on TC…
@8 Eric L :
I Agree, waiting to see how they will return the investors’ millions !
Incredible.
Good widget. Use it on my blog.
I like that it’s so basic and doesn’t include anything that isn’t necessary.
They add ads, I’ll pull the plug.
Bye-bye, 100m viewers.
I’ve tried both, and Add to Any is better:
http://www.addtoany.com/
No bullshit ads, no signup, every service is listed, it’s searchable, and there’s no dumb loading time for the widget … it appears instantly.
It’s as if the web is going backwards. Ridiculous valuations, and funding for little pieces of javascript or flash – laughable! Someone tell me I’m dreaming – am I in the Twilight Zone? We’re talking about a little piece of javascript, aren’t we?
Web 2.0 my ass – it’s as if we’re back in the “oh cool you click it and it does something” phase of innovation.
If someone who worked at one of these “widget” companies came to apply for a job at my company, I’d laugh in their face. Thank goodness there are still people around trying to build real, sustainable businesses – *gasp* yes, I said BUSINESS – that is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Get ready for my new “startup” (that’s what we call websites nowadays): an improved submit button! Yes, it makes your submit buttons look better. I call it Submitr, and it’s a company dontcha know. I’m hoping to raise millions in funding for it, hire a shit load of developers who will have nothing to do all day long, buy some big expensive office space, and wait for the buyout that will never come.
My new company will be highly bureaucratic, and we’ll produce close to nothing over vast periods of time. Meanwhile, kids running fan sites will produce more code, and more features for their sites that we’ll ever roll out.
I love TC, but at the very least 90% of the stuff you guys cover sucks balls, and won’t ever get anywhere – ever.
To the ShareThis, and Slide teams: you’re morons. Grow up, build something real, or work for someone else. Sorry for the vent, but it’s getting crazy now.
@ Paul – thank god there’s another sane person on TechCrunch.
This along with Will Price quitting Hummer Winblad to join a widget company makes me think that Silicon Valley has a phase every few years where 50% of the intelligent people become total retards. It’s happening now and has been happening for the past year.
Social networking, RSS feeds, news aggregators, widgets, social network ad networks, blah blah blah, yawn yawn yawn.
This is ridiculous.
A single, free widget does not justify $21 million in financing.
Wow. I don’t understand how a free widget can get so much financing. How are these guys going to make millions?
I understand they have a lot of users, but seriously, how do you they plan on turning users into revenue generators?
-begin rant-
Also, I find the latest version of the WordPress plugin to be terrible. Come on, an iframe?! I don’t want to wait for it to load, and I don’t like the look of it. If I used the ShareThis plugin for WordPress, I’d be giving up stats, etc, just so I could use the older version. I just can’t stand it!
-end rant-
@Paul: My thoughts exactly. It sucks when I can spend months on a project that has 450 times as much complicated code and operations as this, and probably only hope to sell it for $1k. But I do like your submit button idea, perhaps we could team up, and create Inputr. It’ll work with all inputs, and um… have a glossy logo?
That’s a lot of money for one widget.
why not use MadKast?
what happens to the contacts that you import on ShareThis? i can’t find them. this sounds like BT to me.