ShareThis is a technology company that provides free engagement and growth tools for site owners. Their tools allow the sharing of content across 40+ social channels and are used by over three million publishers globally.
History
ShareThis was founded in 2007 by David E. Goldberg, engineering professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Tim Schigel. ShareThis owns an exclusive license, with the University of Illinois, for Goldberg's patent applications. The patents include genetic algorithms and machine learning for the purposes of information discovery and learning from sharing behavior. In July 2011, Kurt Abrahamson joined the company as CEO and served for 8 years before transitioning into an Executive Chairman role in June 2018. Prior to ShareThis, Abrahamson was the CEO of SocialMedia.com. Before that, he served as Director of the Content Media Group at Google where he was responsible for leading the global launch of Google AdSense, managing the direct sales channel for publishers, and securing long-term deals with 5 of the top 10 web properties. In June 2018, Dana Hayes Jr. was named CEO of the company. Prior to ShareThis, Hayes served as the group vice president of global partnership development for Acxiom building strategic partnerships and distribution relationships to advance data-driven marketing and advertising globally. Prior to Acxiom, Hayes held a number of senior leadership positions with Tribune, quadrantOne, and Travora Media as well as serving as an Executive in Residence/Advisor role for Abundant Venture Partners, a business incubator focused on early-stage, service-based companies in media and healthcare. ShareThis is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA with offices in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Their primary investors include Mercury Fund, Deutsche Telekom Strategic Investments, DFJ, and Jump Capital. In February 2019, The Register published a story indicating that 16 companies, including ShareThis, were the victims of a security incident. A security breach exposed 41 million unique email addresses alongside names and in some cases, password hashes and a small number of dates of birth held by ShareThis. The data was listed for sale on the dark web after which time ShareThis verified the breach and sent notifications to compromised users. ShareThis launched an investigation with forensic and data security experts to review the incident and identify measures to improve security. The data was not used for commercial purposes with ShareThis partners and clients.
