Comments on: Free and open source alternative to ShareThis, AddThis, AddToAny

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:33:19 +0000

Thanks for the Post. AddThis ist during this time not running

By: cheesus

cheesus — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:35:30 +0000

Aargh, should have known better than to use HTML brackets to obfuscate my email. try again:

My eMail is tom@FIRSTNAMEAGAINHEREeicherDOTde

By: cheesus

cheesus — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:33:28 +0000

Hello,

the share code has a problem on Safari when the page is not scrolled up (i.e. a page that is longer than the screen and the share is in the footer)

I found a fix by “someone” (another anonymous coder, it seems) in
https://onyx.ets.org/onyx/rsc10/share/Document1.txt

Well, iBegin Labs/Enthropia seems to be dead for some time now (forum link dead, not a single email address anywhere…), so wouldn’t it be the time to upload the current version to some open source hosting site (google code, codehaus, …) …?!?

I guess some people would be interested in extending it, fixing bugs, make new skins, add more services…

I’ve (tried to) email both the people at iBegin and at ets.org.
Let’s see if I get some response.

If I receive none, what do you people think ?

My eMail is tom@eicherde

Cheers, Tom.

By: Brian W

Brian W — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:03:33 +0000

I ended up ditching ShareThis/AddToAny, etc. due to privacy concerns of our clients. Not being aware of iBegin Share, we ended up just building our own WordPress plugin, Trackable Social Share icons.

In our version, we ended up ditching the pop-up box since none of our clients wanted it (they tend to only display twitter, facebook, and maybe email). We also handled tracking entirely through Google Analytics (which can be turned off), which lets you manage all of your web analytics in the one spot that you probably are anyway.

At any rate, we just tossed our version up at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/trackable-social-share-icons/

Think it’s a worthy competitor, or should we just be using Ibegin Share anyway?

By: Srikanth

Srikanth — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:40:57 +0000

OMG……looks like AddToAny hired a bunch of comment-goons to advertise themselves.

First of all, great job Frank. I totally agree on every point of yours. Summary: Services like AddToAny, ShareThis and AddThis are great for totally “i-read-web-designer-for-dummies, i-am-a-web-designer” type of non-technical people who prefer ease over performance. But for a sane average technical person, the dependency issues that arise out of these “simple” plugins are downright unacceptable.
I am pretty sure that my remarks will be made obsolete by the goons of the big giants. Checking out iBeginShare. Superb post. Thanks.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 10:18:55 +0000

I’d like an open-source non-tracking alternative to AddToAny, etc. So I read all this with great interest. I then went enthropia and checked out the demo. I wasn’t impressed with the (default?) button, but that would obviously be customizable. I also wasn’t impressed with the order of the buttons on the first tab. No logic at all – Facebook first, Twitter last, and everything in btwn, like Digg, etc. Finally, and most importantly, the short email I tried to send failed due to a problem with, it said, “the database”. I was advised to click the refresh link, but that just led to another, more final, error message and apology. Guess I’ll go w/ AddtoAny, and use the instructions I’ve seen for disabling the tracking (http://neoacademic.com/2010/06/20/removing-secret-behavioral-marketing-from-wordpress-addtoany/). And later I’ll contact the company for help in setting up the script on my own server….

Btw, it seems like the whole internet is being taken over by list developers. The consequences are actually enormous, I think. Consider one example: the USA is taking no action on global warming because, it seems, [1] a large percentage of the population is in an echo chamber (created via browser tracking, etc.) that denies the reality of human-caused climate change. And [2] the rest of the country seems to have fallen for very effective marketing campaigns which have turned debates over environmental politics into debates over environmental products. And these marketing campaigns, too, have been enabled w/ browser tracking, etc.

By: David

David — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:59:27 +0000

Regarding Pat’s reply (August 20th): It is true that the links in the original post don’t seem to work. As pointed out in one of the other comments, it seems that the app is being handled by Enthropia now. (Some sort of biz transition perhaps?)

Download and documentation can be found on their site:

http://www.enthropia.com/labs/share/

Regards!

By: Pat

Pat — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:23:29 +0000

This is classic open source. Load up the shotgun with fine, handmade shot. Polish the barrel to an attractive shine. Call everyone from miles around to come see your superior tool in the open bazaar…

Then, point it downward and blow off the end of your own foot.

The site’s been jacked for weeks now. No sign that the developers are even aware of it much less care one way or the other.

This sort of renders all arguments about functionality and efficiency moot, no?

By: Patrick Phelan

Patrick Phelan — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:42:35 +0000

I would love to try out iBegin Share but can’t seem to get the download link to work. Is there an alternate way to access it?

By: Alois Kratochwill

Alois Kratochwill — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 05:53:49 +0000

Interesting article, thanks.
I wanted to try iBegin´s scripts on my server but iBegin´s database server has a problem for weeks, no downloads possible.