Today Facebook launched yet another value-added feature, the Send Button. The Facebook Developers website explains, “The Send Button allows your users to easily send your content to their friends. People will have the option to send your URL in an inbox message to their Facebook friends, to the group wall of any Facebook group they are a member of, and as an email to any email address. While the Like Button allows users to share your content with all of their friends, the Send Button allows them to send a private message to just a few friends. The message will include a link to the URL specified in the send button, along with a title, image, and short description of the link.”
The Send Button is intended to focus on private more so than public sharing. Designed as the Like Button companion, this new feature will also support the strides Facebook has been making to improve the Facebook Groups feature.
With over 500 million active Facebook users, will this feature eliminate the need for the near archaic, “Email to a Friend” button? Is this the end of “Email to a Friend” as we know it? Based on the momentum Facebook has shown, I’m thinking yes is a safe bet. There really is no benefit to “Email to a Friend” now when you can share a piece of content with your group of friends within a social platform. What does this mean for businesses? Now you have even more incentive to produce really amazing content that people naturally want to share.
