Category Archives: Decision Making

AddThis vs. ShareThis

Posted on by

Some Background

In the past few months, I’ve received emails from both AddThis and ShareThis to use their respective sharing widgets on our site Menuism.com.  Since we were already using AddThis, the first email came from ShareThis, asking us to try out their widget.  Not having a great reason not, we gave it a try since it looked like they had some nice financial backing and might be evolving the product a bit more.  A couple weeks after switching to ShareThis, I got an email from AddThis asking why we switched away from them.  I gave him some of the reasons the ShareThis representative gave me about why they were better (newer faster widget, more personalization, etc.) and he countered with their focus on performance and providing an experience that is improved in a measured way.  I decided to give AddThis another try with their updated widget.  Soon after this switch I got yet another email from ShareThis asking why we took them off.

Man, these guys are good at keeping track of who’s using them.   Time to decide, which is going to be?   Both seem to have similar traffic levels and if you look at different websites and blogs the usage seems to be pretty split 50/50.  I read a bunch of articles on “addthis vs. sharethis” and didn’t find anything overwhelmingly in favor of one over the other.  So here’s my crude and unscientific approach to coming to an answer (you may not be convinced after reading this, but, hey, I tried and it’s good enough for me).

The Comparison

Criteria AddThis ShareThis Verdict
The Buttons addthis sharethis AddThis. While they’re both customizable, I find the AddThis button slightly more appealing since it uses the “+” sign instead of the weird boomerang and the small icons of recognizable sharing services makes it clear what the link is for.
The Widgets sharethis widget sharethis widget AddThis. I like the simplicity of AddThis and I like the categorization of ShareThis. This was going to be a toss up, but I think the clean list of links on the AddThis widget is just easier to scan and use.
Integration Simple. Post a HTML javascript snippet where you want the button to appear. More complex.  While you can also just put the HTML javascript snippet in the place you want the javascript to appear, you get faster performance when you put some Javascript in the HEAD of the page first then make javascript calls when you want the button. AddThis. It takes zero though and 5 minutes to integrate AddThis, while it took me some time to figure out a way to get ShareThis to load without much impact to page load times.

Also, the AddThis widget auto-sense where the widget is in relation to the page edges so it’ll either open to the right, left, top or bottom of the button depending on what shows up best.  For ShareThis, you have to be explicit about telling it how much offset to use left or right – that’s not fun.

Lastly, when you do the complex javascript integration sometimes the widget doesn’t load if your page isn’t fully finished loading which means clicking the link won’t do anything.
Performance .0176 shares per page view .00782 shares per page AddThis.
Reporting Each site you want to track needs a separate account.  Tracks activity by type of sharing (bookmark, email, etc.) and also by content, sharing service and continent. Can track activity for multiple domains with a single account.  Tracks not only widget activity, but also number of button views, times a widget was opened and also the ratio of both of those to page views. Also tracks top content and sharing services. ShareThis. It’s really nice being able to track multiple domains with a single account and the information about widget serves/page view is pretty interesting.
PickFu Survey Comparison of which button people would click on. Comparison of which button people would click on. AddThis. Feel free to conduct your own PickFu Market Research Survey.

Final Verdict: AddThis

I found that AddThis had the best combination of ease of integration, ease of use from a customer perspective, best performance and least impact on the web page loading times.  It’s a bit annoying to have an account to track reporting for each website you have, but it’s not that bad nor something I check that frequently.

Just my 2 cents for the whole addthis vs. sharethis comparison.  Feel free to come to your own conclusions!

What do you prefer as a user?  What do you prefer as a website owner?

Justin

Are you in “The Dip”? Quit and you might succeed

Posted on by

Are you trying to power through some tough times? Are you really going to make it and succeed? Maybe you’re actually in a cul-de-sac (essentially a dead end) where there’s no chance for success and you need to quit…

Dreary thoughts, I know, but they’re reality checks everyone needs to go through. According to Seth Godin’s book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), people who succeed don’t do so because they never quit, they succeed because they know when to quit, which battles to avoid, and when to persevere through tough times.

At the recommendation of our advisor, John and I listened to the self-narrated audiobook version from iTunes which took a few hours to finish and sparked a few more hours of discussion. As with most of Seth’s books, the concepts are simple, but he does a good job of explaining and illustrating with stories.

One of the examples was about snowboarding and how it’s easy to learn, but there’s clearly a “dip” before you can truly master it. He made the argument that unless you have the dedication and resources (time and money) to persevere, you might as well not even start snowboarding. It seems like an extreme proclamation, but it gets his point across. It also hit pretty close to home since I did exactly that. A lifelong skier, I gave snowboarding a shot, learned it pretty well for a few seasons, but hit the wall (well actually fell off a jump onto my face and slid down the mountain) and gave up. Had this been a business, I would have wasted plenty of money and time.

The key takeaway we got from the book was that if you’re not going to be the best in the “world” at what you’re doing, don’t even start. Being the “best in the word” means you’ll have to power through the inevitable “dip” along the way to success. The keys to success here are to:

  • define your “world” appropriately, and
  • be aware of your capabilities, resources and commitment

Remember, this is the world of the Long Tail. You don’t have to be the best blog in the world, you can define your world to be “best blog about cute animals” and have tremendous success.

The other thing we learned from Seth is that you don’t get credit for starting something then just giving up when the “dip” gets tough. It’s one thing to quit because you recognize a cul-de-sac/dead end, but if you just quit because the dip is hard, then you’ve neither succeeded or learned anything. What’s to say you’re going to succeed at the next venture that inevitably has a dip? If the dip is too hard, change your world and your goal to something attainable given your resources and capabilities.

Take a few minutes to think about it.

Are there things that are taking valuable resources away from your primary goal that maybe you should quit? Are you going to be the best in your “world”? Should we stop blogging?

I’ve love to hear any thoughts or stories.

- Justin