madKast to be acquired by ShareThis
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September 26th 2008 |
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Derek wrote about MadKast over a year ago, shortly after i joined Widgets Lab. then he implemented it here in the blog and ended up ditching it because of integration problems. back then. the differences with ShareThis were not really significant as they are now. ShareThis now offers support for more services and got better integration. this allowed ShareThis to surpass all the competing Link Sharing Widgets and gained them serious financial backing.
Madkast was the one option that at the time that looked to be the widget that would be able to compete with ShareThis. this of course never happened because madKast glacial development pace compared to ShareThis. but that not means they didn`t had interesting tech and the right ideas. ShareThis seems to think so because they are now acquiring them. something that validates the approach madKast had. the reason for ShareThis to buy them out is because they don`t want to take any chances and solidify their first place in Link Sharing. a must because of the funds they have so far raised.
The competition in this space is also hard. ShareThis continues to compete with AddThis, AddToAny and the relatively newcomer Tell-A-Friend among other lesser known solutions like Addit and iBegin Share. Tell-A-Friend is the more likely to be able to compete with ShareThis from a tech and implementation point of view if it evolves fast. AddThis is just second to ShareThis and they continue to grow fast. by acquiring madKast. ShareThis ensure their winning position against their competition. no matter if their competitors do manage to evolve fast or not. all thanks to the complemented tech and developing team refresh they will get from madKast.
The only thing i hope so. is that this means we will see ShareThis improving their implementation and ease of use in the same way some of the competing widgets have done. my preferred executions continue to be Ibegin share and Tell-A-Friend.
I did tried out iBegin Share and found it to be superior in some ways to ShareThis. but their slow development pace and lack of proper support for Internet Explorer made me ditch them in favor of ShareThis. after some time using ShareThis and having tried all the other widgets. it is easy to understand why they are a success. it resumes to development pace, browser support and good analytics. it will be interesting to see what the next versions of ShareThis will be like with the added value of madKast.
via TC
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