Just a day after Easter, Facebook has resurrected its forsaken Share button and rechristened it Send -- seating it now at the right hand of the Like button.
The new Send button is intended as the more-targeted companion to the social network's Like button. The now ubiquitous Like button shares a link to -- and a snippet of -- a web page on the user's wall, where it goes out, by default, to everyone. By contrast, Send is intended for sharing with smaller sets of friends, Facebook groups and even by e-mail with people not on Facebook.
For those who forgot the days before the Like button, Facebook's earliest attempts at getting users to funnel and share what they did outside Facebook's walls into Facebook was the Share button. It worked much the same as the new Send button, but was tossed aside when the Like button was introduced last year.
Facebook's Like button has been widely adopted by millions of sites as a way to get users to spread the gospel to their online network of followers. But people have complained that don't like Like, because it broadcasts to everyone in their circle -- and often to the public. Many a Facebook user's friend circle has now grown to an unmanageable amalgamation of family, co-workers, bosses, long-lost elementary-school chums, business prospects and people they aren't sure how they know or why they friended.
So the Send button, which sites can embed alongside or instead of the Like button, works like a messaging system. You start typing the name of a Facebook friend or a Facebook Group you belong to, and you get a list of possible recipients. You can add multiple ones, and even add straight e-mail addresses. You can then add a message, and it will be delivered to recipients' inboxes without showing up on your wall.
The impetus seems to be threefold:
- Increase the number of people using Facebook's messaging system, which locks users further into Facebook.
- Deal with the problem of sharing on Facebook with only a subset of people, without having to go through the hassle of creating groups.
- Increase the amount of content from outside the web flowing through Facebook, which -- needless to say -- locks users further into Facebook.
If you'd like to see the button in action immediately, check out the implementation on travel-advice site Gogobot, one of the 50 early partners on the project.
As Gogobot describes it: "If you are planning a summer trip to somewhere tropical, you may not want all your friends knowing your main activity of interest is the local public-library tour. The Send button is perfect for sending questions directly to the most relevant people on Facebook, like a few old English-major classmates, rather than posting to your whole group of friends."
For those who want to add the Send button, Facebook has now posted the code snippets you'll need to use on its developer's blog.
See Also:- Today Facebook, Tomorrow the World
