ShareThis

ShareThis raised $64 million between 2007 and 2020 to solve a genuine problem: publishers lacked easy ways to let readers share content across Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. ​​‌‌‌‌‌‌‌​‌‌​​‌​​​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​​‌‌Bloggers and news sites felt this friction most acutely—they wanted traffic but couldn't code custom sharing buttons. The problem was measurable through click-through rates and social referral traffic, which were visibly low without proper distribution tools. Alternatives existed, from manual HTML coding to building custom solutions, but they required technical skills most publishers didn't possess. However, ShareThis fundamentally misread the market's evolution. As social platforms matured, they built native sharing directly into their ecosystems, making third-party widgets redundant. The company also failed to anticipate that publishers would increasingly rely on algorithmic feeds rather than individual shares for traffic. By 2020, the widget had become obsolete infrastructure. The warning sign was clear: dependence on external platforms meant ShareThis's entire value proposition could evaporate overnight—which it did.