Double, Double Toil and Trouble

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(Blog title: Shakespeare reference, Olsen Twins movie, or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban score track #5? You decide.)

AddThis has offices in Washington, DC and New York City, both of which were hit by now infamous Hurricane Sandy this week. While NYC is still in the dark (and we’re thinking about them every day!) that didn’t stop some A-Teamers here at AddThis HQ from getting in the Halloween spirit yesterday, as well as some members in our LA office and other remote locales.

Our 2nd Annual Halloween costume contest saw a variety of crazy characters. Three of the “best dressed” won prizes in the following categories:

  • Funniest
  • Scariest
  • Most Creative

AND THE WINNERS ARE …

Jeannie in LA won Funniest with her hilarious Stewie outfit:

Will in LA won Scariest with his impersonation of Tony Montana from Scarface:

And Leiser from AT:HQ won Most Creative with her interpretation of a “data dump”:

Congratulations to you all!

And in the name of honorable mentions, here are some more photos of the wacky Wednesday wear:

Tiffany as Janet Jackson in the Control era, Kori as Penny Lane from Almost Famous, Collin as an AddThis “adult publisher” and there’s that data dump lady again!

Stephen as Magnum PI!

Paul as Superman and his superdog!

Joe, from our NYC office, is Frankenstorm/NYC reporter. Sandy can’t mess with our sense of humor!

Tracy was a cowgirl and her horse.

Natalija as a “Roman” Goddess … every other day she’s just a regular goddess. :)

Does this look like fun?! If so, check out our open positions! If it’s not your cup of tea, don’t worry, it’s not mandatory to dress up on Halloween. :)

AddThis Site of the Week: HelloWallet Blog

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In this edition of Site of the Week, looking for tips on how to track small purchases (that always add up to larger dollar signs)? How about some pointers on how to financially plan for that family vacation? Enter the HelloWallet blog!

HelloWallet is a friendly, digital financial service for individuals to help them manage their money. They also deliver financial advice using a technology-based model. We love them for a variety of reasons, but think it’s worth calling out that they have a SMILE in their logo. How can you not appreciate a service that looks to make finances fun?

The HelloWallet blog isn’t just a place for company news, but where the team dishes out some high level tips and tricks for being financially responsible. We’re not talking boring, ol’ “don’t spend more than you make” type of topics, but fun articles like “The True Cost of a Twinkie”. And those are the articles always worth sharing! So let’s take a look at how they are using AddThis:

On the blog main page, next to each article preview, HelloWallet has a custom share button with the new sharing menu on hover, along with our Facebook Like, Twitter tweet and LinkedIn 3rd party buttons. This gives regular readers a quicker share option to all their preferred destinations.

On each article page, they again use 3rd party buttons and our native AddThis share counter for the full service menu. The buttons are prominent and near the title, always a good practice for increasing social numbers.

Finally, HelloWallet is also using our Address Bar Sharing feature. AB Sharing allows them to track the articles that are being shared by using the good old fashioned copy and paste method. It is still the most common way to share today and the best mechanism for having insight into all social sharing.

Now excuse us because we’re feeling inspired to go clip coupons and be financially savvy! Thank you, HelloWallet!

If you have any questions about any of the HelloWallet AddThis implementations, please let us know.

October Hackathon 2012: Robotics for the Remote Worker and Plenty of Plants

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Another successful AddThis Hackathon is in the books! We measure the success of a Hackathon in a few different ways:

For those not familiar with hackathons, they are our 24-hour sprints of innovation. A-Teamers group up, or work alone, on a new project outside of what they are currently working on in their day-to-day. The energy surrounding a hackathon is always fun and familial. They are a very important part of the AddThis culture.

WINNER: Telepresence Roomba Robot

The winning project of this installment of all-night coding was quite impressive. The team went out to solve a common challenge we face at AddThis. Since we have multiple offices across the country, sometimes communicating and collaborating requires extra effort. So, the team created a telepresence robot using a Roomba, a MacBook Air, foamcore and a rocket launcher. And the entire thing was controlled from a Google Hangout! See it in action:

Congratulations to the winning team! It was well deserved.

Honorable Mention: AddThis Garden

The unofficial “runners-up” also deserve Earth Day Award 2012. “AddThis Plant” went on a mission to “green” our new HQ office in Virginia. It is an extensive project of plant growing, caring and loving with the end goal to have a nice array of beautiful oxygen-producing decorations for our work space. Check them out:

And those are just the official winners! There were many other brilliant and noteworthy projects that did not go unnoticed or under-appreciated. Some of which will be used to make everyday AddThis processes more efficient — a win all by itself!

Like this? Check out more posts about AddThis Engineering.

 

AddThis Site of the Week: E Book Browse

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It’s Friday, you are antsy for the weekend and possibly looking for the occasional distraction. So for today’s AddThis Site of the Week, we decided to help you with that.

E Book Browse is a website that allows you to search for books and documents that are available online. If we were still in college, we’d totally be using this site to help us write our paper at 2am the morning it’s due.

E Book Browse also uses AddThis for their sharing tools. Fancy that!

The implementation covers two basic and important best practices that we like to preach:

  • Make your sharing buttons discoverable.
  • Present each individual user with the services they prefer.

As you can see in the screenshot, E Book Browse has their share buttons prominently placed next to the most important content on the page – the book! There are tabs displaying 4 share services and the AddThis + symbol, which opens our menu on hover.

AddThis Menu on Hover

As for providing a more custom experience for each user, they are using our “preferred services” feature. We display services based on individuals’ past sharing history, as well as what is most popular across our network based on geographic data. It is designed to make it easy for users to share to their preferred destinations and to increase sharing.

We think Barry (the “author” of The Playbook) approves of that.

New! AddThis Site of the Week

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Introducing a new weekly blog feature! We’re always talking about the size and scale of our 14M domain network because we’re proud and humbled to be connected with so many of you and the great work you’re doing. We are inspired by all the different ways publishers and site owners customize our tools to create beautiful and unique web experiences for their users. It’s about time we start highlighting some of the standout integrations of our tools. So, welcome to the very first AddThis Site of the Week!

Letters of Note is a blog that gathers interesting notes, postcards, memos and other forms of correspondence from time periods throughout history.  We appreciate the simplicity of their design because it lets the content stand on its own.

Letters of Note uses the new AddThis sharing menus to create a streamlined experience for users to share the amazing and often inspirational content. We love how the button blends into the site unobtrusively, suggesting that users share with what feels like a gentle nudge. It feels almost like you should share because it blends so well with the user flow. Maybe we’re biased, but we love the orange! Then, once the user shows interest in sharing by mousing over or committing to a share by clicking, the full menu puts an array of custom options at their fingertips.

Initial results show that the new menu increases sharing by 11% across brands and, since our launch, the expanded menu has seen a 4x lift in shares.

We look forward to featuring more of the amazing sites that use the AddThis tools and hope that by doing so, we will promote creative ideas as well as highlight some best practices for using our tools.

If you ever want to submit a site for AddThis Site of the Week, please feel free to shoot us an email.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Clearspring!

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(Originally posted on the Clearspring blog.)

It’s been a very busy week here at Clearspring with the announcement of XGraph joining the family. So busy, we didn’t get a chance to blog about our very first Halloween Costume Contest!

To give a quick rundown from some of our offices — Winnie the Pooh was spotted writing code and the iCloud was shedding “water droplets” all over the floors at HQ in McLean, VA. NYC was was raided by a zombie and a Richard Simmons exercise video extra showed up. LA even saw dead people.

Here are some pictures, including the winners of the three categories – Funniest, Scariest and Most Creative.

 

HQ’s Elizabeth Leiser won Most Creative with her rendition of the iCloud.

HQ’s Collin Hughes won Funniest for dressing up as fellow Clearspringer Ted Pearson. Here’s a reference:

LA’s Will Watson won Scariest for his interpretation of Dia de Los Muertos.

Some honorable mentions:

Rebecca Salerno of our NYC office dressed as a hostess turned zombie. She has rats in her hair!

NYC’s David S. just got back from filming his latest exercise video with Richard Simmons.

Charlie the Pooh.

25 Hours of Racing

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Last weekend the Clearspring Motor Club racing team, Cobra Kai, raced their Swedish Race Truck at Nelson Ledges Road Course in Ohio as part of the ChumpCar Longer Longest Day.  After 25 hours, 25 minutes, and 25 seconds of racing—stopping only to change drivers and refuel the car every 2 hours—the checker flag dropped with our car in 13th place overall, a great result from a field of 74 cars that started the race.

ChumpCar is a racing series similar to the 24 Hours of LeMons.  The premise is simple: buy a car for less than $500 and run it on a racetrack for hours on end.  The car that accumulates the most laps over the race is declared the winner.  This sort of “crap can” racing isn’t just orbiting a circle track, nor is it a demolition derby.  The tracks are complex and difficult to master.  The danger is real, too—we wear helmets, head-to-toe fire gear, all of the cars have full roll cages, and the safety rules are extensive.

In endurance racing the biggest factor is reliability.  As long as you can keep out on the track without problems you have the basis for a good race.  Performance can only take you so far and since the $500 price of the car includes any performance modifications, options there are limited.  Our team has made great use of cutting things off of the car to improve performance.  Before our first race we cut the springs and filled them with tennis balls to make the suspension stiffer.   At our second race, the ChumpCar 24 Hours at VIR, we turned the race wagon into a truck by chopping the roof off while waiting in line to get into the racetrack.  Our car’s performance from this weight-saving modification were enough to encourage another team at our most recent race to do the same with their Volvo.

Overall we had a great race without any problems that kept us off the track.  Ending up in 13th place—ahead of dozens of cars that were turning faster laps when they were on track—is an wonderful achievement.  For complete details on our race, check out this post on the CS Motor Club blog.  Next time, we’re shooting for the top ten!

Think this is awesome?  Check out the jobs page, we’re always looking for new drivers folks at Clearspring.

My first week as a Springer!

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Last week was my first week here at Clearspring and already I feel like a part of the family.  Maybe it’s the daily catered lunches or the Wii Tennis Tournament we had on Friday (Jeff and I clinched 2nd place!) or perhaps it’s because my desk is right next to the snack table (don’t worry, I don’t judge!) — but whatever the reason, everyone’s made a genuine effort to introduce themselves and make me feel at home.

As with most new jobs, the first week consists of trying to learn new names with faces to match, who does what, where you need to be when, and the ins and outs of how to get this or that done.  Lucky for me, my coworkers made that (typically overwhelming) experience an absolute joy  — I don’t know that I’ve ever walked into a new job and felt so welcomed!

What I love is there’s a clear “work-hard, play-hard” aura in the office and it’s evident how much Clearspring employees enjoy their jobs.  Knowing that I’ll be working with people who exude such positive energy combined with seasoned skills, talents, knowledge, experience and passion is both refreshing and motivating.

I’m extremely happy with this opportunity to work with such an excellent team, and I look forward to learning from them and sharing that knowledge with you!

Cheers,
Elizabeth

Elizabeth@clearspring.com

twitter.com/AddThisMaven

AddThis – A Spiritual Experience

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We recently stumbled across this awesome video of a user preaching – literally – about his experience with AddThis. We couldn’t resist sharing!

We’ve always maintained that we have an amazing community of support but testimonials from people who dig the product never get old. And when it comes in the form of a sermon on sharing, well, we just can’t argue with that!

We love you too, friend!

AddThis Analytics Performance

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The AddThis Network has grown tremendously over time. Although we have been working hard to expand our infrastructure to accommodate this growth, some of our customers are experiencing delays when trying to view their analytics reports.

We will be rolling our additional capacity to address this problem, and appreciate your patience as we expand AddThis to be better than ever. As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The AddThis Team