comScore Ranks Clearspring as the Number One Widget Network Worldwide
Data supports content sharing as emerging communications trend
McLean, Va. - Oct. 28, 2008 — Clearspring Technologies, the leading widget network connecting publishers and advertisers to audiences on the social Web, experienced a 59 percent increase in worldwide usage of its sharing service between August and September. The company attributes this increase to a growing social trend of communicating by sharing content online, as well as its acquisition of social bookmarking leader AddThis, and newly formed partnerships with leading media publishers such as MetroLyrics and SnagFilms.
According to comScore, Clearspring logged 254 million unique visitors worldwide in September, easily outdistancing its nearest competitor by 93 million visitors. In addition to ranking Clearspring as the global leader in the widget market, comScore revealed that the company also extended its lead by 34 million in the U.S. market in September, growing 43 percent and reaching over 101 million unique visitors in the United States.
"These rankings signal a much larger trend in the social media industry," said Hooman Radfar, chief executive officer and co-founder of Clearspring. "The comScore report helps validate our supposition that content sharing has emerged as a mainstream form of online communication with various opportunities for advertisers to reach an important and growing audience on the social Web."
Clearspring is widely credited for jumpstarting the widget category by being first to introduce click-to-share technology for making embeddable Web content portable. Clearspring also released the industry's first widget analytics tools and was the first widget analytics platform to be audited by the ABCi. In September, Clearspring, Google, and Adobe were given 'Innovator of the Year' awards at the Interact '08 conference in Washington, D.C.
Clearspring's easy-to-use services allows people to share Web pages, photos, videos, movie trailers, news, sports updates, trivia quizzes, games, and music with friends and provides a new set of opportunities for advertisers to engage more often with their customers online - specifically on the Social Web. Clearspring's product offering includes two approaches to advertising with widgets:
- Widgets served as ads through Clearspring's platform.
- Advertisements within a widget.
Clearspring's viral distribution enables Web widgets to be shared and distributed across more than 80 blogging, social networking, and bookmarking services. Clearspring's analytics suite enables detailed tracking and analysis of widget activity and performance for both publishers and advertisers.
Clearspring acquired AddThis, the No. 1 bookmarking and content sharing service on the Internet, in September 2008, helping the company to grow to a size comparable in reach to the 7th largest property on the Web. The recent acquisition only furthers the reach of the universal sharing service.
comScore is a leading source of data and metrics for both the digital world as well as mobile usage that is trusted by brands such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Best Buy and more. Statistics quoted in this release are found in comScore's September 2008 Worldwide report.
About Clearspring
Clearspring is the leader in social distribution, connecting publishers and advertisers to audiences on the social Web. Clearspring's content sharing products, ranked No. 1 by comScore, enable publishers, developers and advertisers to easily distribute and track digital content such as widgets, videos, photos and links to the most popular destinations, including social networks, start pages, bookmarking sites, blogs, mobile devices and desktop platforms. The company provides additional distribution of content on a paid performance basis to the world's leading brands through a targeted social distribution network of affiliate partners. The company reaches over 534 millionusers worldwide. Its tools are served billions of times monthly and they power programs for many major brands and over 400,000 other long-tail developers. To learn more, visit www.clearspring.com.