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Clearspring Widgets morphs into AddThis - Widget platform set to go offline

Posted by Anonymous | 11:41 AM | gadget , widget | 4 comments »



Recently ClearSpring widgets announced that their widget platform will be going offline. This has devastated some small businesses who built their apps on the ClearSpring platform.
As ClearSpring widgets merges with AddThis, or really I should say, as ClearSpring widgets morphs into AddThis they leave many of their previous developers in the dust...

ClearSpring executives have stated that they will continue to serve all widgets until Jan. 2011. This gives all publishers one year to make what ever changes must be made so it's not a total loss for most of us. As I was reading the forums at ClearSpring I noticed that some developers are really scrambling to find a decent alternative to host their container files et cetera.

If this recent ClearSpring issue has you scrambling for another spot to host your widgets then be sure to check out WidgiPedia and WidgiLand.

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  1. Justin Thorp : December 26, 2009 at 12:18 PM  

    Hi, my name is Justin Thorp. I'm the Community Manager for Clearspring. Was just curious if you had gotten a chance to take a look at our widget support within AddThis. I'd love to hear your thoughts. - http://addthis.com/help/flash-overview

    best,
    -justin
    justin@clearspring.com

  2. Anonymous : December 26, 2009 at 5:18 PM  

    Hello Justin,

    Yes I started looking at it yesterday. I have used AddThis in the past and don't really see how that platform can, in anyway, compare to the ClearSpring Platform.

    Maybe I just can't see your entire vision for this project so I am missing important details...I don't know. But I will certainly look into it and send my feedback via the ClearSpring Forums et cetera.

    Thanks for the comment,
    Dave

  3. Rodney Joyce : March 31, 2010 at 3:13 AM  

    I don’t see how this can be a good thing for all the developers who used ClearSprings LaunchPad to create and share widgets.

    There are thousands of developers like me who are now stuck with no one to turn too – no service offers the level of functionality like LaunchPad for JS/HTML widgets – AddThis is a content sharing platform, not a widget creation platform – CS admit this on their own transition forums.

    Lets be clear on this – this is marketing and acquisition affecting a fantastic technical platform that a lot of people relied on… and now it’s gone…

    So no… it’s not a good thing – Clearspring completely left developers like me in the lurch with no alternatives that offer the same functionality (I don’t want to add a AddThis share button – I want to create and share JS/HTML widgets!)

    The only website that comes close is WidgetBox – but even that does not have all the functionality that ClearSpring is shutting down…

    Don’t be fooled…

  4. Anonymous : March 31, 2010 at 8:54 PM  

    Hello Rodney,

    I agree 100% - a bad move on the part of Clearspring! A decent alternative for HTML based widgets is www.widgipedia.com

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