You can hardly walk through a few pages on the Web these days without bumping into some variety of URL shortener, sharing bookmarklet, or aggregation site that tries to show the most popular data. Bit.ly has become the shortener of choice for Twitter, with StumbleUpon and Digg having their own offerings in sharebar land. A lesser-known alternative is Sharein.com, which launched a while back, and hasn't had a whole lot of pickup, so far as I can tell. But in looking at the service, I see that ShareIn.com combines the information I've always liked about bit.ly, including statistics, with benefits I've liked on other sites, including individual user history and total share popularity across the network.ShareIn.com's goal is to make it easy for you to share items you find online with your friends, and it offers three ways to do so - via Twitter, via Facebook, and through e-mail. Like other bookmarklets, you just add the "Share via Sharein.com" bookmark to your browser, and can share any link from the Web to your connections.
Sharein.com Posts Links to Twitter, Facebook or E-mail
The Resulting Share On Facebook
As you can imagine, I have tried a lot of different services like this. That Sharein sends your info to Twitter or Facebook is not ground-breaking, but it is convenient. The bookmarklet even autopopulates your share on the headline and a short description, which you can customize.
You Can See Views On Each Share Over Time, Like Bit.ly
I Can See Previous Shares on Sharein.com, With Stats
What's most interesting about Sharein is what happens after the share takes place. All shares are tracked by individual, so you can see how many views each share got, or how often they were reshared (much like retweeting). Each share can also be tagged, and you can find other shares in the network that have similar tags, as well as see how often they are shared.
Sharein.com Items Shared With the Tag of Facebook
Popular Shared Items on ShareIn.com, With Total Views
All this data feeds into Sharein's "Shares" page that tracks the most popular shared items in the last day, 7 days, 30 days or 365 days. And the site also highlights the most popular sharers. I have seen Paisano share with the product, and he is in the top 5 overall, according to the site's stats.
Today, if I am not sharing via Bit.ly, I share my items with the FriendFeed bookmarklet, and pass those updates to Twitter and Facebook. But ShareIn.com gives the option to bypass Twitter (or FriendFeed) altogether, sending right to Facebook or e-mail and delivering the same type of click-through data. It's a very interesting mashup of solutions that typically have required separate sites.