While in the process of implementing a CSP and defining the allowed sources, I was shocked to find the total number of resources ShareThis calls. At the time of writing this, I counted a total of 39 domains and subdomains it uses.
Not a big surprise anymore why ShareThis was causing my slow page load times. From what I found, the majority of the calls are for ad and user habit tracking pixels. No wonder they’re a free service, they’re probably getting paid big bucks from companies to track what you’re doing. Though, I understand they need to connect to the various social network APIs to grab numbers, I don’t think they need to add tracking pixels for advertisements and user habits.
An example is adadvisor dot net and crwdcntrl dot net. Their domains used by Targus Info and Lotame which is an advertising company that is part of a network of sites, cookies, and other technologies used to track you, what you do and what you click on, as you go from site to site, surfing the Web. Over time, sites like adadvisor.net and crwdcntrl.net can help make an online profile of you usually including the sites you visit, your searches, purchases, and other behavior. Your profile can then be exchanged and sold between various companies as well as being sold to other advertisers and marketers.
Alternatives to ShareThis
After finding out everything ShareThis is doing, it was time to find some alternatives. Here’s some I’ve found that seem to be less resource intensive—though may still load ad and user habit tracking pixels, not nearly as many as ShareThis:
AddThis dot com
AddToAny dot com
Shareaholic dot com
Share42 dot com (very basic, no third-party scripts)
WordPress Plugins
If you prefer a more plug-and-play options, here’s some pretty good WordPress plugins and Drupal modules for social sharing.
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Flare
Flare is a simple yet eye-catching social sharing bar that gets you followed and lets your content get shared via posts, pages, and media types. -
Social Count Plus
Display the counting data of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Steam Community, SoundCloud posts and comments. -
Dig Dig
Your all in one share buttons plugin. Add a floating bar with share buttons to your blog. Just like Mashable! -
AddThis
AddThis Share Buttons help drive traffic to your site by helping visitors share, bookmark and email your content to over 330 services. -
Shareaholic
Adds an attractive social bookmarking menu and related content widget to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three.
Drupal Modules
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Social media
The social media module helps integrate your website with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. It provides an centralized way of managing social media profile information and plug-in widgets such as follow and share buttons. -
Easy Social
Centered in a single place, you don’t need to worry in including external javascript libraries, and enabling several social modules. -
AddToAny
This module helpers your readers and subscribers share, email and bookmark your articles and pages using the popular services such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and over 100 more. -
AddThis
This is the #1 bookmarking and sharing button on the net. Simple and easy to use button that’s used by 14 million websites worldwide and reaching 1.3 billion people worldwide per month. -
Service links
Service Links facilitates the adding of social networks links or javascript buttons within the content with a special focus on developers and themers interested to extend their number or customize their displaying. Built on Drupal for Drupal doesn’t include commercial advertising or spying hidden code and doesn’t require third part libraries.