It is notoriously difficult for browser plugins to gain traction — getting users to download anything massively raises a service’s barrier to entry. But Shareaholic, a plugin that makes it easy to share content across a variety of social and bookmarking sites, has been doing quite well: the company has seen well over one million downloads since launching less than two years ago. Today Shareaholic has annouced that it closed a seed funding round that includes investors Edward Roberts (MIT Entrepreneurship Center, Sohu), Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot), Eric Dobkin (Goldman Sachs), Brian Balfour (Viximo), David Cancel (Compete), Andrew Payne (FanSnap), and Brian Shin (Visible Measures Corp.). The company declined to share the exact amount of the funding, but says that it was “a few hundred thousand” dollars.
Shareaholic’s functionality is fairly straightforward. You find a site you like, click on the plugin’s button nestled in your browser toolbar, and choose which service you’d like to share it to (there’s dozens of options, including sites like Facebook, Digg, and delicious). This functionality isn’t especially unique — there are plenty of other apps that make it easy to share interesting websites and media with friends. But Shareaholic does have the advantage of being compatible with every major browser, including support for IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. And perhaps more important is the startup’s success at grabbing attention of the browser makers themselves: Shareaholic is a featured Firefox extension (it’s shown on the browser’s ‘Get Started’ page) and Microsoft has previously distributed it preinstalled with some copies if Internet Explorer 8.
Along with its impressive 1 million download stat, Shareaholic has gotten some other notable accolades: it won Mozilla’s Extend Firefox contest last year, was featured in Microsoft’s IE8 keynote, and, yes, it was even mentioned in the book Twitter For Dummies.
I used Shareaholic constantly, it’s certainly one of the most useful extensions I have.
Plug in installation is generally a bad idea, since it is much more complex to develop and might cause the browser to become unstable.
For simple applications like content sharing, it makes sense to use bookmarklet instead. It requires no installation, and is cross browser with minimal effort.
I’m currently developing a discussion platform that uses bookmarklet, and it’s working great – http://itok.in
This is the first plugin I download when I install Firefox for the first time. Even before Firebug!
Congrats Jay! Glad to see you succeed to this next step with your Shareaholic vision. Also glad to see you have one of the smartest ex-CTO’s in the biz as your adviser.
Rex
Why is it that every article TC writes about a browser addon or a desktop application always has this:
“getting users to download anything massively raises a service’s barrier to entry.”
Is it really that big of a barrier to entry? think about this: How many people have “downloaded” an instant messenger client? How many people download a browser that isnt shipped with their operating system? How many people have downloaded WinZip, Acrobat, updated Flash, TweetDeck, iTunes, etc etc…
The barrier to entry is “click this link, then click install”. Other than people being concerned about getting a virus or whatnot, the barriers arent really there….and once that application is installed (especially in the case of a browser addon), the amount of usage is probably far higher than just a “website” where people constantly have to type in, or bookmark, or remember to go to. Once you have Shareaholic installed, its always visible and can be accessed a lot easier than going to a website.
Not to mention, the distribution channel that Mozilla offers through AMO (their addon site) is integrated directly in their browser and brings in MILLIONS of addon downloads every day.
Enough already….this barrier to entry to claim is just sillyness.
AMEN!
“getting users to download anything massively raises a service’s barrier to entry”
Its relative. Compared to experiencing a service by visitng a URL, having someone install a plugin is at least 10x harder.
Say, someone launches a Digg clone, Techcrunch raves about it. I’d wager a fair number of people will click through to “experience” it.
Someone launches a Digg-like toolbar. How many users you think will actually click through and install it on their browser just to “experience” it?
“getting users to download anything massively raises a service’s barrier to entry”
Its all relative. Getting someone to experience a service by visiting a URL is 10x easier than getting someone to install a plugin.
Take for example a Digg-clone service. Techcrunch reports and raves about it… I’d wager a fair amount of people will click through to “experience” the service.
Now, say a Digg-like Toolbar. How many people do you think will actually click through and install the plugin in order to “experience” it?
Congrats Jay! Great news!
Werd.
Congrats Jay – that traction is phenomenal… keep it up!
Congratulations, Jay! That’s fantastic news.
I use ShareThis – better UI and Twitter integration. BTW, how are these guys going to make money?
good question? another dot com bomb is ticking
Open window. Throw money out. God bless angels and the failed entrepreneurs whose advice they follow. I wish I could sell Ed Roberts investments short.
Congratulations, Jay!
I use Shareaholic and love it… Congrats Jay.