Currently one of the weaker things in Web 2.0, in my opinion, is sharing things you want your friends to see. You see something cool on YouTube or Flickr or Wikipedia, and how do you show it to your friends? Either by copying and pasting the link in an e-mail (geek style), copying that link and IM’ing them it, or lastly by using their ancient and sooo Web 1.0 “e-mail this to a friend” link. ShareThis sets to solve this problem with a much better solution.
How It Works
Like LeapTag, ShareThis is a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer (PC or Mac, depending which boat you’re on). Installing it gives you a giant button beside your address bar (or search box in Firefox), which says, oddly enough, ‘ShareThis.’ So now, when you’re at a YouTube video, or a article on Forbes, or basically any web page in the world you feel like sharing, click on that button and a headsup window will pop up letting you share it. The window contains a form of sorts which allows you to enter a subject, message, and decide whether you want to (and here comes the main part) e-mail it to your friend, post it to his or her MySpace/Facebook profile, or IM it through AIM. A minute more, and you’re friend is probably looking at it.
Opinion
Is share this the killer viral sharing/spreading app we’ve been looking for? Clearly this is a space which needs someone to come in and solve this problem, and I think if the folks at ShareThis are smart in getting their own viral marketing campaign to work (irony, anyone?), they could be it.
