ShareThis

ShareThis provides website engagement tools and data solutions, enabling publishers and advertisers to leverage global digital behavior. Its technology synthesizes social share, interest, and intent data from real-time consumer actions across millions of domains. The product suite, including share, follow, and reaction buttons, alongside platform plugins, offers capabilities for content amplification and behavioral insights.

Timothy Schigel founded ShareThis in 2007, foreseeing the importance of seamless online content sharing. His insight was to develop an accessible platform simplifying how internet users distribute content. This idea spurred integrated tools that facilitated broad content dissemination and fostered connected digital experiences across the web.

The company serves publishers and advertisers, aiding audience engagement and traffic generation. ShareThis’s vision centers on empowering audiences to amplify content while equipping clients with advanced behavioral intelligence. This includes delivering privacy-centric data solutions within an evolving cookieless digital ecosystem, ensuring sustained relevance.

# ShareThis: High-Level Overview

ShareThis is a data and advertising technology company that enables content creators to share digital content while collecting behavioral data for advertisers and marketers.[1] Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, ShareThis operates as a consumer insights platform that synthesizes social sharing, interest, and intent data across over three million global domains.[2] The company provides free website tools and plugins that facilitate content sharing while simultaneously gathering real-time behavioral signals from users—transforming this data into actionable insights for ad targeting, customer acquisition, and analytics purposes.[1][2]

The company serves a dual-sided market: content creators benefit from free sharing tools, while advertisers and technology companies leverage ShareThis's behavioral data infrastructure to understand and reach consumers more effectively. ShareThis operates within the broader advertising and marketing technology sector, positioning itself at the intersection of content distribution and data-driven marketing intelligence.[3]

# Origin Story

ShareThis was founded in 2007 by David E. Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Tim Schigel.[1] Goldberg brought academic expertise in genetic algorithms and machine learning—technologies that would become central to ShareThis's data collection and discovery capabilities. The company secured an exclusive license with the University of Illinois for patent applications developed by Goldberg, giving it proprietary technology for analyzing user sharing behavior.[1]

The company's early positioning as a free sharing tool for content creators proved strategically valuable, allowing it to embed itself across millions of websites and accumulate behavioral data at scale. This foundation enabled ShareThis to evolve from a simple sharing utility into a comprehensive data platform serving the advertising technology ecosystem.

# Core Differentiators

• Scale and reach: ShareThis operates across over three million global domains, providing real-time visibility into consumer behavior at unprecedented scale.[2]

• Behavioral data focus: Unlike traditional ad tech companies, ShareThis specializes in *sharing behavior* and *intent signals*—capturing what users actively choose to engage with and distribute, rather than relying solely on browsing history.[1][2]

• Proprietary technology: The company holds exclusive patents for genetic algorithms and machine learning technologies developed by co-founder David Goldberg, creating defensible intellectual property for information collection and discovery.[1]

• Free-to-premium model: By offering free sharing tools to publishers and content creators, ShareThis achieves broad distribution while monetizing through data licensing and insights to advertisers and technology companies.[1][2]

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

ShareThis operates within the data-driven advertising transformation that has reshaped digital marketing over the past two decades. As privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and browser changes have limited third-party cookie tracking, companies like ShareThis have become increasingly valuable by offering alternative signals—specifically, *first-party behavioral data* derived from explicit user actions like sharing.[1][2]

The company's positioning reflects a broader trend: the shift from passive tracking to active engagement signals. Sharing behavior is a strong indicator of consumer interest and intent, making it more resilient to privacy restrictions than traditional tracking methods. ShareThis's scale across millions of domains gives it unique visibility into global consumer interests and trends, making it a critical infrastructure layer for advertisers seeking to understand and reach audiences in a post-cookie world.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

ShareThis faces a pivotal moment. The company has demonstrated resilience and scale, but it operates in a sector under intense regulatory and technological pressure. Its strength lies in its massive reach and the quality of behavioral signals it captures—sharing behavior is inherently more privacy-friendly and intent-rich than traditional tracking.

The company's future will likely depend on its ability to deepen relationships with advertisers and marketing platforms while maintaining trust with publishers and users. As privacy regulations tighten globally, platforms that can deliver consumer insights through transparent, user-initiated signals (like sharing) will have competitive advantages over those reliant on opaque tracking. ShareThis's evolution from a sharing tool into a consumer insights platform positions it well for this transition—but only if it continues to balance the interests of all stakeholders in its ecosystem.