Service Directory

What is the Service Directory?

There are many, many different places to share content all over the world. In AddThis, we call these Services — a "Service" is just a web URL that can accept shared content. The Service Directory includes all of the services AddThis knows about. It lets publishers, users, and service owners see where sharing is happening on the web, and suggest new destinations.

AddThis uses the Services Directory, along with deep analysis of sharing activity, to provide users with smarter, more contextually relevant choices for sharing content to specific services. Simply put, AddThis helps to put the right services in front of the right user at the right time.

• For service providers, this means an increased likelihood of being presented to their users.
• For publishers, this means more sharing of their content.
• For end users, it simply means sharing is easier and more relevant than ever before, no matter where they are or what language they might speak.

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Adding New Services to AddThis

Services need to be in the Directory for AddThis to be able to share content to them. Most sites that can accept shared content already can be easily added to AddThis without making any changes. For sites that wish to start accepting content for the first time, we provide a simple specification for doing so.

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How Are Services Added?

It's easy to add services — new places to share content — to the directory. Anyone is invited to suggest that a service to be added via a simple web-based form. Select the "I'm suggesting a service" option, and fill out as much information as possible about the service. Don't worry if you don't have all the information, just fill in as much as you can. The AddThis team will review this service and test its functionality before adding it to the public Directory and publisher tools.

Service owners can also submit their own service to the directory with more detailed implementation information.

As a third party, if you have the correct contact information you can also reach out to the operator of a service and suggest that they add their site themselves. Just give them the link to the Submit a Service form.

Regardless of how a service is submitted, it will be reviewed for addition to AddThis tools per the standard approval process outlined below.

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Service Providers: More Information About Adding Your Own Service

If you are an operator of a website that can, or would like to, accept content, you can submit the service to the Directory via the Submit a Service form. Just select the "I manage and/or operate my service" option and fill out the required information. Please fill out as much information as possible. Most of the fields are self-explanatory -- its the actual share method which is most important.

Accepting Shared Content

In general, you will need a URL on your site to which AddThis can send the user's browser. The AddThis sharing tools will pass specific arguments indicating the content to share; your site will perform any appropriate user authentication or login and then "accept" the content. What "accepting the content" means is up to you — that's the value of your service!

Your site does not need to redirect back to AddThis or otherwise do anything special — the user will be sent to your site in a new browser tab (a target="_blank" to be precise) and left alone.

For the URL, there are two ways your site can integrate with AddThis' sharing tools:

• by supporting the OExchange parameter names
• by providing a templatized URL with your own custom pattern and argument names

Supporting OExchange-Offer

This is the preferred method of integration. You just provide a standard OExchange-Offer endpoint on your site. OExchange is an open spec, and its as simple as implementing an endpoint (whatever you want) and accepting the standard arguments:

• url: the actual URL being shared (url-encoded)
• title: the title of the page being shared (url-encoded)
• description: the description of the page being shared (url-encoded)

This is a simple subset of the full OExchange spec. Just specify the endpoint in the submission form, and we'll pass the arguments to it when you receive share requests. For example, if your site supports a URL like:

http://www.example.com/share.php?url=blah&title=thetitle

Then you'd just enter http://www.example.com/share.php as your share URL. The parameters will be added to it automatically at share-time.

Using a Custom URL Scheme

If you already have a URL on your site that accepts shared content, and that URL includes the URL and title of the link being shared, you can add that to the Service Directory without changing anything. Simply select the "Custom" choice in the form and specify that URL, using special tags to represent how you want the URL and title passed in:

• {{url}}: will be replaced with the URL of the link being shared
• {{title}}: will be replaced with the title of the page being shared
• {{desc}}: will be replaced with the description of the page being shared (if available)

For example, if you entered a URL like this:

http://www.example.com/share.php?the_url={{url}}&title={{title}}

Then when a user wants to share something to your service, we'll send the browser to that URL, replacing the template parameters appropriately.

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Review and Approval Process

Once any service has been suggested or formally submitted, it will be reviewed by the AddThis team. We'll check any URLs, and verify that we are able to communicate with that service. If you are a service provider and submitted specific URL or HTML formatting for your service, we'll confirm that these work as you specified.

If a service is approved, we will send an email confirming it's approval with a link to its location in the directory of services.

If we are not able to approve a service, we will send an email with an explanation as to why.

Note that the review and approval process can take up to 30 days -- we appreciate your patience. We may also contact you via email if we have any questions or need additional information to verify the service.