Shareaholic V7, wrong way! very wrong way!

Hi o2xav, we appreciate your feedback!

The #1 request from our users / publishers (by far!) was to support multi sharing. ie. allow your readers to post to multiple twitter accounts and facebook at the same time vs. one at a time — so as to boost sharing activity. The only way to implement this was to do this this way. We have tried to make it really simple and straightforward for users so that it doesn’t come in the way.

Surprising finding:

About two years ago, we implemented oauth for Twitter sharing. We did this because we believed we could provide a better sharing experience if we had complete control of the interface. After all, it’s a focus for us and we think about this day and night. BUT we were very cautious and wondered whether it would end up reducing sharing activity. We suspected it may. So we tested it and collected data.

What we found in the data is that sharing did NOT go down but up! We tested this across tens of thousands of websites.

This data is what gave us the increased confidence to do what we did for this release and we feel having multi-share by far outweighs any other potential cons this system may have. It is far easier for your readers now to post your content to both facebook and twitter at the same time. Which should boost sharing.

The other advantage is that, shareaholic is active on hundreds of thousands of sites. So if a reader already signed in via another shareaholic powered website, they won’t need to sign in again and they will be able to share your content very quickly. Also, as an added advantage, you’ll also now know exactly who is sharing your content so you can, if you’d like, reach out to them. Example report: https://shareaholic.com/publishers/analytics/blog.shareaholic.com/30

This release was a result of a lot of feedback from publishers and readers and we’d love even more feedback all the time so we can make Shareaholic the best possible app for your website. We pour our hearts into the product for you and we’re nothing without your support.

This answer by shareaholic is so wrong.

You have made a big update to this plugin without even thinking about the users.
You say the number one request was to multi share? To me multishare=SPAM and that′s no good.

We ordinary users don′t want it and I personally don′t see a single respons from your part on how to get your plugin working as it should.

You say shareaholic is active on hundreds of thousands of sites, that may be true with the version 6.1.3.8 – when 7.0.1.0 is fully updated you will lose many of those sites.

I tried updating last night and hade to make a clean install of 6.1.3.8 to get it working again. Today my plan was to check here if you had made any thanges and bugfixes to the update, but no…

You can′t even change the settings anymore and using your service to share on facebook – that′s just stupid.

I′m leaving now, telling my users doe to a poor update sharing from my sites is for the moment not avalible. And I will not ever recommend a blogger to use this plugin.

Installed this morning and noped out after the update insisted on placing bullet points next to each service. Then I learn about this multi sharing nonsense. That’s never going to fly with our visitors. I’ll stick with 6.1.3.8 in hopes things change. If not, no biggie. Not exactly starving for WP social bookmarking plugins.

Hi, everyone!
Just a couple additional pieces of information:

We did integrate the shared Twitter & Facebook interface in our other products earlier this year. We slowly released this new share panel, worked on tweaking, and listened to the Shareaholic community feedback; the new interface is designed to support multi-sharing, which has been a major request over the past few years. Basically, you can connect with as many Facebook and Twitter accounts as you’d like and share simultaneously.

So, if you have 3 separate Twitter accounts and a Facebook account, you have the option to add each account within this interface, save these settings, and share to one, two, or all accounts at once without having to sign in and out of each Twitter account as well as pressing the service button multiple times. There are a lot of power-bloggers and sharers out there. I speak with several of them daily while handling support, so it makes sense that we’ve seen this request frequently, and recently, we decided to give this idea a go.

Now, in the past several versions of our plugin, the Twitter button has utilized this interface, and as stated previously, for a couple years, we have been using OAuth as a third-party developer to provide an enhanced sharing and connectivity function that utilizes Twitter’s API.

We pushed out a few starter articles today to help with the transition from v6 to v7. They were a bit rushed, so if anything was missed that you’d like covered, please let us know, and we’ll work on getting that information to you. And you can read a blog post of one of the articles here, which actually contains some screenshots for a little visual guidance while we continue to work on fleshing out the documentation.

If you are experiencing any technical issues, we are ready and eager to get these fixed ASAP. We want to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible, and we performed beta testing with some of our current publishers several weeks before the release to make certain that we addressed any issues which had been missed as well as to receive feedback about the direction of our changes.

We’d love to hear your ideas as we are continuously growing and changing and pouring our love and attention into making our products and services the best available.

You have already lost me as user and I sure ain′t going to use your services any more. To put out this bit change and not have the help files ready for the release is a big no no. It tells me you don′t care that much for your users…

If you want something to fix I told you in my post it′s impossible to edit settings, but it looks to me like that part wasn′t that important. If all your beta testers missed that, wonder what more they missed…

Well… I hope for you own sake you start listen to your customers (all customers, not only the spammers that like to post the same post on several acounts.

My idea to you – Change back to the old version that one atleast worked as it should…

Hi rodgevbg! Just a really quick update, we do have another release coming out tomorrow to fix a few technical issues (error messages) that have been reported by a handful of publishers, but just for your piece of mind, here’s a snapshot of our Edit panel.

If you are having problems accessing it after clearing you cache, I’d really need to troubleshoot one-on-one to figure out what’s causing the issue in your situation, but I have read your response and understand that you are no longer continuing with us.

As we do listen to all user feedback, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. They will be discussed and considered.

@rodgevbg @vennstone @o2xav

We released an update (v7.0.2.0) last night based on all the feedback that –

Amongst a slew of updates/fixes, highlights:

• Now access Share Button and Related Content settings without needing an account
• For Facebook, sharers are now taken directly to Facebook per feedback; Twitter works as it has been for the past 2 years.
• Fixed how Twitter and Facebook sharing work on mobile devices

Please ensure to delete your browser cache so you get the latest JavaScript (we client-side cache the JavaScript file for 2 days to boost performance for readers).

@vennstone bullets next to share buttons should also be fixed. If they are not for you, we would appreciate it if you can point us to your website so we can take a look. This should be a very quick fix on our end, in case the issue still persists. — [email protected]

We have had a few reports of the “Edit” button not being responsive (not doing anything) but have not been able to replicate this on our end. We suspect another plugin may be interfering. If you’re still facing this issue, please let us know as well! Any additional information would be helpful in narrowing down the issue.

Any other issues, please let us know as well!

As always, we want and appreciate all your feedback. We try to be very responsive. We’re nothing without you guys and here for you.

I know for us, the past few updates, more especially with this latest one, just reeks of data mining and lack of respect for users.

Just some highlights of problems over the past few releases:

1. Enabling “features” by default. It was extremely obnoxious, even arrogant, to assume everyone would want “related” content show up on their posts without “opting” in to try it. It just happened when the plugin update occurred. Poof… new unstyled features added to your posts pages without permission.

2. Moving user’s blog plugin settings into a 3rd party cloud service instead of storing, and respecting, a user’s settings in their local database.

3. Covertly registering users for your own service — without full disclosure — just to share content. Registration mining. Wow, just wow.

There are certainly others. These are simply the three that have dramatically altered our perception of the trustworthiness of dealing with Shareholic going forward. The business model of Shareaholic seems to have switched dramatically this year from being a great social bookmarking plugin to one that is focused on data mining.

There is a real trend to implement features without thoroughly thinking it through then reacting afterwards. This further makes me question the integrity of Shareaholic when items like the ones I, and others have mentioned are implemented.

To that end, we will no longer be supporting Shareaholic going forward across our hosting services, and are replacing 850+ sites with a different, less invasive plugin.

It’s shame as this used to be “the” social networking plugin to use, but there are other social sharing options out there without the perceived data mining/registration mining practices being utilized now — and then arrogantly spun as a good thing. Amazing.

Best of luck with your new found direction. For us, no thanks.

Just to be clear on my earlier points, Shareaholic’s CEO himself has stated publicly that their core business includes getting users to install their “free” tools in order to gather data, which can then be turned into profit via their partners and marketers. Effectively, they are selling access to data scraped and accumulated from your original content. Thus, the latest updates should really not be surprising.

Shareaholic CEO Jay Meattle told MediaNama that the company’s basic services are free. But if you are are an advertiser and need access to targetable audiences based on the interest and intent signals mined from viewing and sharing habits of users, you will have to pay a subscription fee. It also partners with online shopping sites to offer deals and coupons to Shareaholic users whenever the latter is on that particular shopping site.

The company is currently building a platform to deliver targetable data and audiences to advertisers who engage in real-time buying (RTB) of display inventory.

Source: https://www.medianama.com/2012/01/223-shareaholic-raises-2-milllion-funding-business-model/

Nothing is free, and Shareaholic is hardly free. The price appears to now be:

1. your original content that is ultimately scraped/scanned
2. the traffic coming from your site (embedded links that route traffic through them)
3. the backlinks to Shareaholic’s properties embedded into your pages
4. the data scraped and accumulated seems to be in line the idea of selling access to data to marketers and advertising partners
5. your user’s email addresses when they are forced to sign up for a “free account” to share your pages or original articles — although the email harvesting/forced registration only occurs with certain social networks instead of taking the user direct to the social network they chose.

If you think data mining in exchange for links to social networks or related content is a good trade off, then this is a good plugin for that. If you are uncomfortable in providing the original content, traffic and medium by which this company scrapes and accumulates data that can turned into profit for them, then this plugin is likely not for you.

Wow this is all a little disconcerting – rethink time!

Rongo +1
rodgevbg +1
o2xav +1

The new design is nice, the new panel is too, but your attempt to expand the scope of your control over users and their information is not going to work, and all you will harvest is the loss of your user pool, and your notoriety.

Bye

I forget

Error: InvalidAccessError: A parameter or an operation is not supported by the underlying object
Source File: https://dsms0mj1bbhn4.cloudfront.net/assets/pub/shareaholic_tools.js
Line: 266

This had me worried until I read the rest of that article:

Shareaholic competes with ShareThis, which claims to have 400 million users across 1 million websites last year; Clearspring Technologies’s AddThis, which claims to have 1.2 billion users across 11 million domains and AddToAny, which was recently acquired by the Seattle-based social commerce website Lockerz.

They are all the same it seems. Now totally worried !!

“We released an update (v7.0.2.0) last night based on all the feedback that –

Amongst a slew of updates/fixes, highlights:

Now access Share Button and Related Content settings without needing an account

For Facebook, sharers are now taken directly to Facebook per feedback; Twitter works as it has been for the past 2 years.”

I’m confused here. It fixed the bullet problem on the site but still asking users to login to shareaholic ?_?

Sticking /w the 6.X version until we find a replacement.

Why can’t I change Shareaholic Twitter accounts?

I have 2 Twitter accounts. One is for Spanish speakers, the other for English speakers.

I removed all shareaholic apps from both accounts. I logged out of both twitter accounts.

I went to share a page and bingo, shareaholic still shows the Spanish twitter account as being connected.

There is nothing in the WP shareaholic plugin in to change this. There is nothing on the pop up to change this.

As the Spanish twitter account cannot be removed, I tried adding the English speaking account and got an error that the account was already connected. To where?

What is wrong with shareaholic. It used to work fine, now it is just plain annoying.