February 14th, 2014

As of today AddToAny automatically integrates with Universal Analytics, the latest major update to Google Analytics. Publishers and developers tell us that AddToAny is the first major sharing platform to integrate with Universal Analytics, and we are not surprised, just happy to continue offering free sharing stats in the analytics dashboard you already use. AddToAny was first to integrate with Google Analytics way back in 2008, and we continue to offer tracking methods for other analytics platforms.

What does this mean for your share buttons? It means no worries. Whenever you make the upgrade to Universal Analytics, AddToAny stats will continue to automatically roll into your Google Analytics dashboard no matter what version of Google Analytics your site is running.

In fact, a website that uses any one flavor of Google Analytics is covered, going as far back as the original urchin.js “WebAnalytics” code, the synchronous ga.js code, the asynchronous ga.js code, or the new asynchronous analytics.js Universal Analytics code. Any Google Analytics code snippet (or plugin) is compatible with AddToAny sharing stats.

See the Google Analytics access guide for details on where to access Social Interaction Tracking stats in Google Analytics.

As requested by some, we are maintaining the Google Analytics event tracking method for at least a few months longer. For a painless transition, the event tracking method works in tandem with Social Interaction Tracking. Event tracking will remain in place indefinitely for one of our hidden gems, the AddToAny Subscribe button.

With that, enjoy the weekend, Happy Valentine’s & House of Cards Day, and let’s look forward to seeing AddToAny sharing stats in Universal Analytics next week!

October 30th, 2013

Scalable vector sharing icons have arrived!  For the past months, we have been rolling out beautiful new “SVG” icons across the AddToAny platform.

These aren’t your ordinary raster graphics. AddToAny’s SVG sharing icons are infinitely scalable, customizable, crisp on high density pixel displays, mobile-ready, super-lightweight, and cross-browser.  Make them as large as you want, make them rounder or square, animate them using CSS transitions & animations, and never worry about graphical perfection and efficiency, because that’s what AddToAny strives for:

Perfectly beautiful, technically perfect.

Developers know that AddToAny maintains excellent backwards-compatibility, and SVG icons are no exception. In older web browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 & 7, which do not support SVGs, AddToAny gracefully uses raster icons instead of vector icons. All modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and many more) will display AddToAny’s SVG sharing icons.

At AddToAny, extreme efficiency is always top of mind, so we challenged ourselves to offer new vector icons in just one web request. The result is a fully minified and concatenated single download that renders icons only on demand. It’s so incredibly efficient that soon AddToAny will default to vector icons (instead of traditional raster icons) on high-PPI displays such as Retina displays.

So far, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, WordPress, VK, and dozens more services are among the first SVG sharing icons, with more continuing to roll out. Like traditional sharing icons, AddToAny vector icons will be receiving the same constant updates as logos change.

For WordPress and Drupal publishers, the latest versions of the WordPress sharing plugin and the Drupal sharing module have been updated to support AddToAny’s new vector icons. For publishers & developers on other content management systems, you can get the new icons and code from AddToAny’s share buttons generator and read the docs on further customizing the icons.

We’re excited to bring vector sharing icons to modern web devices, and it’s a thrill to contribute to a more perfect, beautiful, modern web.

October 29th, 2013

Since 2010, Twitter discreetly shortens all shared links using their own t.co short URL service, which makes additional URL shortening unnecessary. So if you tweet a link that is over 100 characters long, Twitter today only counts 20-23 against your 140 characters. Not having to worry about short URLs makes sharing links on Twitter far easier than it used to be.

Last week we finally disabled AddToAny’s default link shortening to Twitter using Bitly’s j.mp service. Bitly had a good run on AddToAny’s platform since 2009, and Bitly remains a URL shortening & link tracking option for publishers.

If you have any questions about enabling short URLs or link tracking for your site using Bitly or another service such as awe.sm, just ask and we’ll show you how.