One year ago, Facebook released its 'Like' button, and it drastically changed the way people shared content with their friends. A year later Facebook realized, that perhaps people might wanna share content privately! 

So last week they released a 'Send' button that lets you share content with your friend(s) or a Facebook group. Its pretty much like 'email a friend', that lets you email a link, or send it via Facebook messages; you can post a link to a group as well. "The Send button drives traffic by letting users send a link and a short message to the people that would be most interested." shares Abe Parvand.

"We designed the Send button to be used alongside the Like button. By including both to your website, people will have ability to broadcast the things they like and also send it to specific people." he adds. 

Many popular websites like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Mashable have already added this button, enabling their readers to selectively share content they like with their peers, family, close friends, co-workers or groups.

Mashable pointed out an interesting detail about this button, "Send counts toward the total number of Likes a page has. The Like total is now calculated by adding the number of Likes, shares, comments and inbox messages containing a URL". Which makes Send button a Facebook version of Tweet button that also counts the number of times a particular URL has been shared via tweets.

As far as adding Send button to your site is concerned, it is as simple as it can be; you just have to copy a tiny XFBML code and you are good to go. You can either choose to add both Like & Send buttons next to each other or a stand alone 'send' button. My advice would be not to give up on the Like button, and add the Send button..if you must.

Also, in days to come, Facebook intends to introduce real-time stats for the Send button, "We will provide real-time metrics for the Send button in the insights dashboard. Once you claim your domain, you will be able to access the number of Send button impressions, messages, and referral clicks send to your site." explains

We are still contemplating whether adding yet another button to our blog is worth it or not, but if you wish to give it a try, then get your code here. And do let us know if you Like it or not.

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