Clearspring, the leading widget network connecting publishers and advertisers to audiences on the social web, releases a brand new sharing menu - it’s smarter sexier and more customizable launchpad. Since it’s initial release, nearly 18,000 additional publishers have signed on to use Launchpad, including most of the world’s leading media companies such as Fox Broadcasting, NBC Universal, and Time Warner.

The new service includes a significantly improved sharing menu that publishers can now customize by color scheme, destination and size. Launchpad’s new liquid sizing feature alters the menu size to automatically fit the publisher’s widget content as well as to fit widget landing areas predetermined by social destinations. The free service also gives content publishers the ability to determine the social destinations they want to promote for each content element.

This beta version of Launchpad isn’t just better, it’s smarter. It gives end users a more personalized experience, where social destinations are presented in order of the user’s historical sharing preferences. For example, if you regularly post content to Facebook and MySpace, those destinations will appear at the top of your sharing menu.

According to comScore, Clearspring is the number one widget network worldwide and logged 254 million unique visitors worldwide in September, easily outdistancing its nearest competitor by 93 million visitors. In addition to ranking Clearspring as the global leader in the widget market, comScore revealed that the company also extended its lead by 34 million in the U.S. market in September, growing 43 percent and reaching over 101 million unique visitors in the United States.

The company attributes this increase to a growing social trend of communicating by sharing content online, as well as its acquisition of social bookmarking leader AddThis, and newly formed partnerships with leading media publishers such as MetroLyrics and SnagFilms.