There is a lot of craziness with Widgets competing for Social Bookmarking and Quick Content Sharing. the most notable examples are of course the now Clearspring Owned AddThis versus ShareThis. But the third biggest player that is addtoany is not interested in that fight because they are not at the level to fight it . but they will give their best to keep a close 3rd place and not let other services surpass them or to risk losing users. in spirit to that. they have been updating their offerings with new features and a new look:
- Visual update (tabs!)
- Digg counts (real-time!)
- Delicious counts (real-time!)
- E-mail made faster/easier
- Prioritize services
- In-widget browser bookmarking instructions (for non-IE browsers)
- More publisher options
Live Counter are not a new thing. they can be traced back to feedburner with their feedflares and to mid 2008 with ShareThis as they started exploring the idea. a new integrated plugin for addtoany for Wordpress should be out any minute now unless they delay it until wordpress 2.7 is out.
A more detailed rundown of what has changed and how can be read at AddToAny Blog.
Now the question is if this will be enough to stay at a close third to Addthis/Sharethis?. the answer is yes. AddToAny already got metrics, brand awareness and it is a proven widget. now they got a better look and up to date features. so there is no reason for them to not continue to do well.
If you are looking for another option on what to choose for your blog when it comes to Social Bookmarking and Quick Content Sharing. AddToAny is a good choice.
