Shareaholic: One Stop Social Link Sharing

Jay Meattle's FireFox Add On Shareaholic has become one of my favorite and most often used browser tools in record time. It works in FireFox 3 . It works with Flock 2.0. It just… works. It makes sharing among all of my sites (Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, FaceBook, etc.) a breeze.

In fact it makes it so much of a breeze I actually had trouble focusing on writing my article about it. I kept trying out the different options for sharing and getting distracted because Shareaholic makes it so easy. Eventually I had to stop posting items and write the post, because this add on about sharing won't write a post sharing the love about itself.

Shareaholic is in competition with ShareThis and other similar sites and add ons, but Shareaholic flat out does it better and is easier to install and use. For one thing, Shareaholic came out of the starting gate with more options for sharing, including current social media darling FriendFeed. Much like Adium's extensive list of chat and messaging clients giving it an edge over other programs like it, Shareaholic's compatibility with more sites makes it the one choice for someone pressed for time, like myself.

Shareaholic also works with Notes in Google Reader. Since Google plug ins are having a bit of trouble in the new FireFox 3 and Shareaholic is playing fine in the FireFox 3 sandbox, this is great news for the Google Reader users out there. It is also convenient – much easier to use Notes from a button on the toolbar than having to go back and forth via Google itself right now because of the FireFox 3 toolbar compatibility issues I keep hearing about.

Shareaholic also works on Flock, as I mentioned, for those of you enamored of the new Flock 2.0 beta. In fact Shareholic and Flock 2.0 may make the perfect combination. I've considered switching to Flock 2.0 with Shareaholic and Tab Mix Plus and making that my browser of choice a number of times this week, since that triple threat addresses all of my web needs as a writer and webaholic.

One thing to note about Shareaholic – you need to have accounts on the services for it to work. This means there may be a delay in its usefulness to you if you have to sign up for new accounts on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Twitter and others. It's worth taking the time, though. It makes it all so simple you will wonder what you did before Shareholic came along.