Archive for the ‘value of sharing’ Category

 
 

Product Discovery At ShareThis

November 22nd, 2011
 

 

ShareThisIn my last blog post, I wrote about the never-ending pursuit of innovation at ShareThis and how important this was in attracting me to my role as VP of product. This time around, I’d like to address another topic near and dear to my heart – product discovery. In brief, product discovery can be defined as the process (part science and part art) of identifying the right products to build for your customers at the right time and in the right sequence.

As I mentioned previously, the ability to continuously innovate drives competitiveness, customer satisfaction, and employee passion. The product discovery process, as well as the resourcefulness and creativity that accompany it, is the wellspring of innovation.

I’m particularly fond of the way Marty Cagan of the Silicon Valley Product Group writes about two key steps to the discovery process. First, once you’ve identified a customer problem, need or desire, you must discover whether there are enough real users out there that would benefit from a solution. I admit, I think daily deal sites are pretty useful; but how many do I really need? Lots of companies have launched variations of the Groupon core product, but how many users will truly benefit from these alternatives? Second, you need to discover a product solution to an identified problem or need that is usable, useful, and feasible. Dealradar.com (a popular daily deal aggregation site) has made daily deal shopping much easier and enjoyable for me!

The tools used in product discovery are numerous and varied, but they tend to fall into four categories at ShareThis:

1. Feedback. There’s no easier way to identify customer wants or needs and quantify their impact than by looking to the current users of your products. By leveraging such mechanisms as Get Satisfaction (feedback mechanism on every page of our website), custom forums, inbound emails, customer calls, an in-person user visits, we can derive some of our best ideas from the most important sources of all – our consumers.

2. Ideation. I’ve found that, when done right, focused brainstorming sessions can lead to the generation of very innovative ideas without falling into the trap of group thinking. In addition, by providing employees with open forums for submitting product suggestions at any time, you create another channel for encouraging innovation.

3. Competitive Assessment. I’ll be the first to admit that inspiration often comes from studying your competition. Others in your space can provide a fantastic stimulus for new ideas, not simply in terms of great things to build, but great products to improve upon.

4. Big Thinking. If you allow yourself to think beyond your company’s offerings, and even your industry landscape, and focus instead on trends occurring around you, you can often discover sparks of innovation that can fuel impactful product initiatives. For example, by looking to trends in casual gaming, we realized that sharing leaderboards (top users) provide very interesting data for our publishers and consumers.

In the end, there is no shortage of ideas for new products at ShareThis. Our job is to take all these ideas, and discover the gems that solve real problems and mean something to our users. This requires a connection with our customers, big thinking from our team, and a healthy does of creativity to make it all work!

by, Barry Grant, VP of Product, ShareThis, Inc.

Follow ShareThis on Twitter: @ShareThis

Like ShareThis on Facebook: /ShareThis

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ShareThis Publisher Services Blog Post

November 15th, 2011
 

 

Here on the Publisher Services team, we often get the question, “What type of websites use ShareThis?” This never fails to put a smile on our faces, because there is no one answer to this question.

Anyone who is interested in harnessing the power of social media (and who isn’t?) can benefit from social sharing in different ways. From sports and entertainment content giants to brand and e-commerce businesses, our network of over 1 million websites is comprised of a wide range of web properties.

Just like people, every web property has its own unique identity, and therefore can benefit from social sharing in different ways. Some properties have audiences that share almost exclusively via Facebook, while others have users that share more privately through email. Internationally, people will share into social destinations that are popular in only certain regions of the world. ShareThis makes it easy to allow every publisher to feature sharing channels that best resonate with their audiences.

But how does a publisher know the best way to implement – and optimize – social sharing on their site? As with many strategic decisions relating to running a web business, guidance can he found by monitoring analytics. Just a few months ago, ShareThis revamped its Sharing Analytics dashboard for publishers (http://help.sharethis.com/analytics/analytics-overview). By using this free tool, web and editorial teams can see what content is being shared and clicked the most, the channels that users are sharing to, and even what parts of the world have the most sharing!

Using these insights, publishers can fine tune how they display ShareThis on their site, and even make editorial decisions informed by social sharing data points. On the publisher services team, we work closely with many of our publishers to help them make informed decisions. As mentioned earlier, there is no “one size fits all” approach, and that’s what makes the job both challenging and fun!

If you are a publisher, feel free to take a look at our latest product and analytics offerings at: http://sharethis.com/publishers/.

And, if working with publishers sounds interesting, you might want to think about joining the Publishers Services team at ShareThis! Here are some of the roles we are looking to fill: http://sharethis.com/about/careers/

by, The Publisher Services Team, ShareThis, Inc.

Follow ShareThis on Twitter: @ShareThis

Like us on Facebook: /ShareThis

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Why Sharing Is Essential For Your Brand

May 24th, 2011
 

 

One hundred seventy-six million people. That’s 57 percent of the U.S.
population, 82 percent of U.S Internet users, and the size of nine New
York cities. It’s a lot of people. It’s also the amount of unique
people who, according to ComScore, use, see or otherwise encounter
ShareThis every month. This is – though we’ve beat our chests over it
a bit – a very humbling number for us. It’s a ton of people using our
simple sharing tool.

But it’s also emblematic of something else. Something beyond
ShareThis. What that number says to us more than anything else is how
important sharing is to people and what a core part of online behavior
it has become. Though the term “Web 2.0″ has been around since 2003 (in
popular usage at least), its true manifestation in the form of
hyper-social information sharing apps and services has only been
around since about 2006 and popular beyond the tech world since 2008.
It’s only two-and-a-half or three years since sharing shifted from
occasionally pushing a button to send a news story to your mom or dad,
to becoming the center of some of the Web’s biggest companies.

There’s an early, but fast-growing industry revolving around sharing.
Think about it: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, SCVNGR and a host of
other hot startups are all based around sharing – and Google is
certainly trying to reorganize itself to do the same. These companies,
along with other others like ShareThis have all figured out how to
build businesses modeled enabling sharing. But there’s room for more.
How do companies that aren’t native to the Web – big brands and
companies – capitalize on this huge shift that reaches half of the
American population, more than 80 percent of the U.S Internet audience?

Brands can be part of both the evolution and revolution by encouraging
sharing around their own brand, wherever and whenever people are ready
to engage. Sharing gives all brands an entirely different way to
advertise that’s timely, targeted, personalized and trusted. It
creates a connection between content, people and the people they know,
and is based on what people are talking about and who they’re talking
about it with – intensely personal signals that go beyond traditional
behaviors used to target audiences. And because it’s a social
activity, sharing gives deep insights into what people care about and
the relationships they have with other people.

ShareThis enables the spread of information, by consumers, from
publishers, anywhere on the web. It’s the core of what we do. But that
core also enables a whole new economy to revolve around it: People
share, web publishers see how and why people are sharing, and
advertisers are able to get inside conversations people are having
about things they care about.

This is why we constantly talk about the importance of sharing. It’s a
simple, but intensely important act that almost everyone who owns a
computer does every day. Or at least 176 million of them did in April.

Sharing is a part of people’s every day lives. We’re going to make it
an every day part of the online economy.

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