Facebook Users Don't Have to "Share"

As we all learned way back when, it’s important to share with others. But apparently Facebook users don’t want to necessarily share, but would rather “send” a particular Web page to their friends.

This week, Facebook announced a new button to go along with its perpetually used “like” button – a “send” button that, when you click, lets you “send” the current Web page you are on to a Facebook friend or Facebook group. It’s a similar functionality to the “share” button that does a very similar thing.

As of April 25, the “send” button will be available on over 50 leading websites, and it will appear in more places soon, according to company officials.

According to Facebook’s Elliot Lynde, the rollout of Facebook Groups last fall has made it even easier for users to share with their friends.

“It’s always been easy to share with all your friends on Facebook, but until we introduced Groups last October, there wasn’t a simple way to share with just a few people. Much of what we share in our daily lives is only meaningful to smaller groups of people, like our family, roommates, or co-workers. With Groups, you can create a private space to share with just those friends,” Lynde, a software engineer, wrote in an April 25 Facebook blog post.

“In the six months since our launch, people have created over 50 million Groups on Facebook. It’s grown quickly because of its social design. Instead of making everyone build and manage individual friend lists, one person can create a group for their families and everyone in the family gets to use it.”

And as many times as you may have “liked” something a friend has said on Facebook, there are probably as many occasions you have actually strongly not liked a particular post. 

Wonder what would happen if Facebook decided to give us a “dislike” option. Just sayin’.