According to this Washington Post article, local widget and widget platform development firm Clearspring is buying a AddThis, a content and web sharing service out of Princeton, NJ.
AddThis offers a one buttong solution to share your content and bookmark and share other items you find of interest. They also have some great anlaytics that allow you to see how your shared content is shared and spread by users.
It will be very interesting to see how Clearspring will work to integrate the new service. I defeinitely can see some good “synergy” (hate this word but its early and cant hink of another 
) between the two products. Clearspring obviously works hard to get their widgets the widest possible spread around the interwebs. Maybe they can use some of the analytics from AddThis to help see the scope and breadth of just how viral or popluar it has become. Add in the possibility to save items directly from a widget could be interesting as well. As Clearspring Chairman Ted Leonsis states in the Post article
“What we are building is the next-generation universal-sharing platform,”
We will be watching closely to track the progress. Congrats Clearspring and good luck.
