My Share This plugin for WordPress has proven to be very popular. It is being used on a number of high profile sites including Mashable.com, GigaOM, Web Worker Daily, AllThingsD.com and others. It’s a good example of a tool meeting a need. As you would expect, I wasn’t the only one trying to solve the sharing problem.

There are many people approaching sharing from a variety of different perspectives, some with really great ideas beyond what are in the current Share This plug-in. That’s why I’m very pleased to announce that I am working with the good people at ShareThis to build a next generation sharing tool that continues everything that’s been started with my Share This plug-in.

We first started talking a few months ago to discuss what the potential of us working together could lead to. I’ve been very impressed with the people at ShareThis. They have a great (and growing) team in place, and their attitude about “doing the right thing for the user” has really impressed me. Those factors and more made it an easy decision to want to work with them.

Share This is now the owner of the WordPress plugin code, along with the the stand-alone Share This widget code I created (that some folks are using with Drupal), and the Share Icon.

Let’s tackle the rest of the details in an O’Grady style Q & A…

Why would you want to sell this to someone else instead of building it out yourself?

There were a number of logical next steps for the Share This plug-in, but even though I thought they’d be great additions to the plug-in, I wasn’t planning to add them. I’ve got some experience trying to scale consumer services and I know how big an undertaking it is. I’m thrilled that I can skip some of the nasty heavy lifting and still help work on the user experience.

So what happens to the WordPress plug-in now?

We’re going to make it even better. There is a long list of features that will be added, and they will be great improvements.

Is the WordPress plug-in still free and Open Source?

Yes, the current WordPress plug-in remains a published work under the GPL license. We’ll be making a new version available very soon with some great new features that I expect most people will want to upgrade to.

Will ShareThis be available for HTML page and other platforms?

Yes, we are working on new releases for WordPress, regular HTML web sites and other popular CMS and blogging systems.

What about the Share Icon, what happens to that?

ShareThis is now the caretaker of the Share Icon. Based on the discussions I’ve had with them and the time I’ve spent with them, I trust them to do the right thing for the community. These guys get it.

Are you still involved with the project?

Yes, Crowd Favorite is working with the ShareThis team on a number of things and I’m excited to help get the new products to market so you can all use them. This work is one of the reasons my blogging has been so light lately.

Can I still download the Share This plug-in and Share Icon from alexking.org?

Yes, these will still be available from my site. There will be a shiny new publishers site over at sharethis.com in the future, and eventually we’ll host things over there exclusively.

I’ll try to answer any questions you have in the comments, and you can contact ShareThis directly with any questions you may have for them.

This post is part of the following projects: ShareThis, Share Icon. View the project timelines for more context on this post.