Clearspring, the company that’s all about socially connecting publishers, services and advertisers to audiences on the open web,  announces a few milestones as well as the launch of a robust set of social plugins, analytics, and audience products to provide a full suite of sharing and engagement tools for publishers and brands.  And if that wasn’t enough, Clearspring is rebranding itself as AddThis, consolidating the company’s current brands under one name that fully represents what this company is all about.

Clearspring acquired AddThis back in September 2008, and since AddThis’ technology is their core business now, it only makes sense to rebrand accordingly.

As an industry leader on the social open web, AddThis is now used by 14 million domains according to the company, reaching over 1.3 billion users monthly, and tracks more than 25 billion events.  The platform is loaded 3 billion times daily and processes 70 terabytes of real-time social data from across the web weekly, powering an end-to-end, data-driven product suite.

“The flow of big data for advertisers and publishers is only as valuable as the data becomes actionable,” says AddThis CEO Ramsey McGrory.  “AddThis powers the social web and social advertising through powerful data-driven products that make site owners and brands smarter and more effective.”

Site owners can now go beyond sharing with the addition of a full suite of social plugins from AddThis, all of which “actionize” your data.  The new social plugins are:

• Follow Tool – Follow buttons can be placed with content on site to allow users to become fans, followers or subscribers in one click.
• Trending Content Tool – The Trending Content tool uses a content feed API to continuously promote a brand’s top content in real time on their site, in newsletters or on social channels.
• Welcome Tool – The Welcome tool allows publishers to optimize an incoming user’s experience by welcoming them with a personalized greeting and call-to-action.
• Additions to Analytics platform – The Analytics product is expanding to provide insights on content generating fans and followers and the most popular sharing format – copying/pasting a URL.

AddThis is also expanding their social tool set to activate data for paid-owned-earned strategies used by brands.  The primary social data solution for advertisers is the AddThis’ Social+ audience product set, which serves over 500 brands.  Where these new tools make the biggest impact is in real-time data across the web, says Clearspring founder Hooman Radfar.  “We can map how those 1.3 billion users are connected, even by search patterns,” he says.

“The key for us is taking that data and giving it back.  The tools are data collection mechanisms but should also offer something to the publisher.  We can make tools that recommend other content, and there’s even more sophisticated ways to benefit,” Radfar explains.

“For brands, there’s audience engagement.  The idea of social targeting is becoming so important on the web.  How do you reach users based on their connections across the entire internet?  We layer in all the other ways people are connected.  That to me is powerful.”

The actionizing of their real-time data is a critical step in AddThis’ ongoing evolution, as it looks for more ways to leverage social data for web publishers and brands.  The new widgets extend the ways in which an audience can be engaged, which is increasingly important as more niche outlets pop up around social curation trends.

Starting today, AddThis, Clearspring Technologies, and XGraph will consolidate and move forward under the single brand AddThis.  XGraph will remain a standalone brand for the data technology and processing platform of AddThis.

“The AddThis social product suite stands for powerful, easy-to-use tools, intelligence and data, making it the ideal corporate brand platform as we continue on our path to bring a complete social data offering for advertisers, publishers, and users,” said CEO Ramsey McGrory.