
Share: The Icon No One Agrees On - lominming
https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one-agrees-on
======
ggchappell
The problem that comes before this one is whether _share_ is a well-understood
action.

If I "share" via e-mail, then I _transmit_ a document to others. After this,
each recipient has a separate copy which, thereafter, is completely out of my
control.

If I "share" via social network, then I _upload_ a document. This makes a
single copy, accessible to previously chosen people. It is (depending on the
social network) somewhat under my control. Others can comment on it.

If I "share" via something like Dropbox, then I make the document _accessible_
to others. No copy is made. If I share via URL, then I give read access. If I
make a shared folder, then I give both read and write access.

Now, we techies know these are different things. Our mental model of non-
technical users' thinking might suggest that, _to them_ , these are all the
same kind of action.

But are they?

Does an average non-technical user think of folder sharing, Facebook posts,
and e-mail messages as the same category of action? I'm not sure he does.

~~~
joshuak
Non-technical users have always understood the concepts of: publish (or
broadcast), share (or collaborate), and give (or send).

The computer world is the one that limited these concepts.

Before web: you can only copy and give.

After web: you can give, or publish.

After cloud: you can give, publish, and share.

I think these concepts should be as well differentiated in the digital world
as they are in the physical.

~~~
robobro
Isn't it all copying on the web/cloud? Your file isn't lost on your end when
you give/publish/share/etc.

~~~
joshuak
Yes a core feature of digital technology is copying it underlies everything.
It takes extra effort to 'simulate' not copying i.e. collaboration, and that's
why shared document collaboration like google docs etc. has really only showed
up recently.

------
mrtksn
This is particularly interesting article because they have the answer to the
question on the bottom of the page:
[http://i.imgur.com/0NdMB4S.png](http://i.imgur.com/0NdMB4S.png)

The share icons are Facebook, Twitter and Google+ logos. The share icon that
nobody agrees to is actually just the icon that is going to reveal the
interface of the actual share icons.

I think that users don't want to share, they want to post on facebook, tweet
or do the thing that people on google+ do(sorry, never used it) because the
context of the thing that you are going to share is often appropriate to one
of these and the reflex of the user is something like "I should post this on
facebook so that my friends see it" or like "I should tweet this so that my
audience sees it".

You can't find the logo for the share icon because the action is fundamentally
something else. I don't know, maybe the button that will open the interface
for the sharing buttons should just represent the logos of the services
available.

~~~
lifeformed
I agree, my Facebook, Twitter, and email audiences are all different groups of
people. When I see something I want to show people, I think "I should put this
on Facebook" or "I should Tweet this".

Actually, I never use "share" buttons, I just go onto the service I want to
use and link to it manually. I guess I don't share often enough, and I want
total control over the message I post.

~~~
joshdance
You rare. A lot of my friends don't use links really on iOS. They use the
supplied actions, or it doesn't happen.

------
robert_tweed
Apple gets this spot on by having an icon represent the action actually being
performed, i.e., sending some information somewhere. That could be to yourself
(a bookmark) to another person, a group of people, or the public at large. It
doesn't really matter.

Many of the others are trying to represent the abstract concept of "sharing",
which doesn't fit the use case at all. That's why those icons don't make any
sense. Others are representing specific technical concepts like graphs that
again, only make sense for certain specific uses and aren't especially
intuitive.

In many ways, it makes sense to outsource this kind of design to someone that
doesn't speak any English and run the brief through a translator. That way
you're forced to explain the _concept_ that the icon needs to represent,
instead of having the icon represent the English word that happens to be
(perhaps wrongly) attached to the concept.

Distilling the concept down to an arrow pointing outwards to represent sending
something is the kind of minimalist, universally intuitive design that Apple
are often brilliant at. Approaching the design task like an engineering task
is likely to lead to this as the optimal solution. I find it endlessly
interesting that good designers tend to do this intuitively, in spite of not
thinking anything like Engineers, whereas Engineers tend to do the opposite if
forced to do design.

~~~
Holbein
Apple's sign looks very much like an exit sign to me:

[http://www.designofsignage.com/application/symbol/railway/la...](http://www.designofsignage.com/application/symbol/railway/largesymbols/exit.html)

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=exit%20Pictog...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=exit%20Pictogram&tbs=imgo:1)

~~~
smrq
Yeah, it reminds me mostly of the MediaWiki outgoing link icon, which is used
as an "exit sign".

------
zippergz
It seems like "just pick something arbitrary and everyone agree on it" is a
better solution than "find a small simple icon that effectively evokes 'share'
to a brand new user." In other words, this is confusing not because the icons
don't represent sharing well enough, but because they're different on every
platform. There are lots of things on computers that aren't immediately
obvious, but once you learn the convention, you don't forget it. I don't care
which one we use, but we need to be consistent. (Ok, not the milkshake.)

~~~
jessaustin
_Ok, not the milkshake._

There is no doubt in my mind, that the milkshake is the best possible icon for
sharing. The only thing that could conceivably be better would be a _Lady-and-
the-Tramp_ -style single-strand spaghetti dinner, but that might be hard to
draw.

~~~
ivionday
Except for the couple billion people who sadly don't know what a milkshake is.

~~~
grrowl
They'll get by, just like hundreds of million who don't know what a floppy
disk is

~~~
jessaustin
It seems floppy disks will soon become, if they aren't already, a much more
outdated concept than milkshakes.

------
kbutler
Rather than "Share", read the action as "Send to".

This clarifies the author's preference for icons with the arrows, fits with
the usual mix of upload/post-to-social-app/open-in-other-app actions, and
removes the motivation for the somewhat out-of-place milkshake icon.

(You can keep the 'share' label for marketing purposes if you want...)

~~~
dmdeller
Exactly. Apple does not refer to this icon as the 'share' icon in official
documentation. It is actually the 'action' button[1]. As in, I have some data
in this app, and I want to do something with it outside of this app. Hence,
the symbol of an arrow moving outside of something.

Many of the possible actions resulting from tapping that icon (on iOS) may be
unrelated social sharing (e.g., copy, save to photo library, assign to
contact, etc.).

[1]: UIBarButtonSystemItemAction;
[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/UIBarButtonItem_Class/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/c_ref/UIBarButtonSystemItem)

~~~
XorNot
The google 'share' icon is the same. On Android it means 'do an action with'
since all it does is activate the intents menu.

------
ripter
Upload and Share tend to be the same thing for most users. You want _this_ on
_that_. I don't think it's coincidence that the share icon looks like an
upload icon in iOS7.

~~~
lcnmrn
This is the correct behaviour. The exact same sign is used on exit doors of
buses.
[http://ak6.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3922265/preview/sto...](http://ak6.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3922265/preview/stock-
footage-airport-directions-sign-taxi-bus-parking-exit.jpg)

The same thing happen with information, it goes from one place to another. The
fact that this action takes many forms doesn't really matter.

~~~
guelo
That bus icon means exit. I've seen similar icons in apps that mean logout,
i.e. leave the app.

------
morsch
I think the Android icons are fine. The old one is a bit easier to understand
due to the explicit arrow direction, but the new one is implicitly directed
correctly for people who are trained to read left to right. It's abstract and
consequently vague, but I don't think that's a big problem: I expect there to
be a share functionality, and in that context the icon is easy enough to
understand.

The new Apple icon is less abstract, but it does seem to scream upload/send to
server, which is also a function I might expect in similar situations as a
share function; I think the old one is better because it points to the side
signifying communication towards a peer.

The Windows 8 one is fine, easily understandable in context for the same
reasons as the new Android one, but it lacks any semblance of directionality.
It's a bit hilarious that it's almost identical to the Ubuntu icon.

The other two are terrible and I probably wouldn't expect them to signify
sharing even in a context where I'd expect the functionality.

Edit: Of course I am an Android user so this may just be (confirmation?) bias
at work. :)

~~~
eridius
> _the new one is implicitly directed correctly for people who are trained to
> read left to right. It 's abstract and consequently vague, but I don't think
> that's a big problem: I expect there to be a share functionality, and in
> that context the icon is easy enough to understand._

I disagree. I think you're just rationalizing your own knowledge of what this
means. And I say that because, as someone who's never used Android, I have
literally never seen that icon before. And if I had seen it in a context other
than a blog post about share icons, I would have had _no idea whatsoever_ what
it meant.

------
Kequc
I've never used a "share" button if I could avoid it and so haven't thought
about what the icon should look like. The concept probably doesn't have a good
icon because the concept itself is one born out of laziness and ineptitude on
the part of users.

If I want to share something on Twitter I'll use Twitter. If I want to share
something on Google+ I'll use Google+. Why should I be expected to try
interacting with those services through Javascript or any other third party
application that needs to authenticate?

I just have a bookmark. Google+, bam. Twitter, bam.

My phone uploads all photos to Google+ whenever it finds Wifi and if I want to
share a photo it's because I'm using Google+ at that moment. I don't need to
share photos from anywhere, at most I generally need to export photos.

But the share button has become to ubiquitous that now it seems to have taken
the place of export in iPhoto, as an example. I need to navigate menus to find
the export option.

I don't need functionality spelled out for me while I'm using a computer like
it was something designed by Fisher Price. If I want to send an email I'll
start composing an email. If I want to share something on Google+ I'll go use
that application.

iPhoto doesn't have an upload to Google+ option, in the case that I'm trying
to manage photos from my digital camera. Which brings up another problem,
which is that Facebook and Apple are in each other's pockets. Once these share
buttons are ubiquitous then companies when they feel like it omit options.

~~~
arvinjoar
Maybe on a PC, let's say I read some artcile through HN on my phone and want
to share it, then a sharing icon can come in handy (because copying and
pasting on smartphones is a bit more tedious than just clicking an icon and
choosing a service).

~~~
Kequc
But wouldn't something like a share button in that case be something better
suited to the browser rather than links on whatever page you are visiting, at
the very least? And even then it should be for whatever service I actually
use.

------
epmatsw
Is there a meaningful difference between share and upload any more? "I have
something on my device, I want to put it somewhere else" is how that icon is
used in iOS and OSX, and for almost all of my use cases, that seems to be
correct.

~~~
saganus
Well, for me at least the difference is that uploading implies a single
destination (I know this doesn't always hold, but conceptually I think it
does. Otherwise there are multiple distinct uploads)

And sharing implies multiple agents, be them on a single or multiple
destinations. I know my definition doesn't seem clearcut, but I think the
implication is that you could share by means of uploading or you could share
without uploading anything (excepting maybe "uploading" the link to someone
else), but you can also upload without sharing anything (i.e. I upload to my
private server) and that's why I consider them different concepts.

~~~
protomyth
I think your over thinking it from the normal users point of view. I want to
press the button to give this thing on my phone to other(s). How that happens
isn't really my concern (link, full file, etc.).

~~~
saganus
You are probably right. Point taken.

------
radley
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_icon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_icon)

The Android share icon has been around since (at least?) 2006 and was used a
lot on websites, particularly Wordpress-based sites.

It was initially open source but then sold Share This and trademarked. Most
services use the icon shape without ST's green button background.

~~~
tripngroove
I think you've touched on one big source of this problem, which is that many
of these icons have been trademarked and saddled with all manner of usage
restrictions and licenses.

As an entrepreneur or designer, am I going to waste who knows how much time
interpreting the usage guidelines from Share This, or devote valuable space on
my site to giving the Open Share people an attribution?

No. I'm going to spend 5 minutes designing something that won't cause future
legal threats or trouble at acquisition time.

We need something with an MIT-like license on it.

~~~
radley
It had an open source license... then it didn't.

As entrepreneur and designer, I go with the most common icon I find in Google
images... which this happens to be.

Keep in mind, the trademark includes the green button background. That's
significantly different.

------
thrush
I think the milkshake is a step in the right direction. Many other popular
icons (envelope for e-mail, key for authentication, gear for changing inner
working aka settings) borrow from a non-digital analogy, and I think that's
what the author was trying to represent with the milkshake. The milkshake
unfortunately does not quite meet the analogy. When you share content, you are
not sharing something that is limited physically (like a toy, food, or drink).
Rather you are spreading the word about a piece of information. Two more
accurate representation that I can think of would be one person whispering
into another's ear (for DM), or a person on a podium like he/she is giving a
speech (for broadcast).

~~~
mopedDreams
How about a megaphone icon?

------
lclemente
As an Apple user, everytime I see Android's share button I think of the Steam
icon
([https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steam_logo.svg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steam_logo.svg)).

~~~
moskie
I don't think that has anything to do with you using Apple devices. Probably
has to do with you using Steam.

------
probablyfiction
I vote for a megaphone of some type

~~~
antidaily
[http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-
Awesome/icon/bullhorn/](http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-
Awesome/icon/bullhorn/)

~~~
trvrprkr
Good icon, other than it looks like an axe at smaller sizes.

------
saganus
I'm just thinking out loud here, but after reading the Milkshake concept, I
thought that maybe the problem is in the word "share" as the driving concept
and not the icon per se.

In terms of the milkshake, that's the perfect icon. You actually share
something when you stop having "a whole" and now you have "a part" but then
someone else has "a part" as well. That's what I've seen parent teach their
kids over and over again. Sharing the ball: _we_ both use it, share your candy
_we_ both enjoy it, even if it means I'll have less.

With electronic articles and other media that gets shared, you actually share
nothing in that sense, you just let someone know about it, whilst still
keeping the whole yourself.

I know that semantically you can also "share information", and you lose
nothing by doing it. But my point is that maybe most people associate sharing
with "losing a bit to give to someone else" instead of just "letting know".

I am thinking hard and haven't come up with a better word, I admit it, but
maybe there is actually a better word for describing that "electronic share"
action?

The bullhorn looks promising, but like someone said, it looks like an axe is
too small. And also someone else said it would have to be different enough
from a volume icon.

Maybe two hands apart, one with a piece of "the whole" and the other hand with
the other piece?

In that regard I liked the Android icon a lot, even though it's a bit too
abstract. But it conveys the idea that you just multiplied the information,
without losing anything yourself. Maybe a diagram of an "information bus"
could work? like a straight horizontal line with a perpendicular line
protuding from it, indicating that you keep going but still produced a new
path/road/source?

Edit: added clarification

~~~
shurcooL
> With electronic articles and other media that gets shared, you actually
> share nothing in that sense, you just let someone know about it, whilst
> still keeping the whole yourself.

What about thinking of it as you both "sharing time/attention" on the target
object?

------
eitally
I'm perfectly ok with the Android icon, which looks different from just about
everything else and is easy to remember once learned. The Apple icon looks too
generic, and there are already way too many icons that look document-ish. The
Windows icon looks too much like Ubuntu to me, and it additionally isn't
intuitive that a circular icon means sharing. The Dropbox & Google Apps icons
are great, but are also large and wouldn't necessarily be easy to distill down
into a square, single color representation.

By far my biggest pet peeve re:action icons these days are the Android
copy/paste icons. Here's a screenshot I found:
[http://i.stack.imgur.com/87bDm.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/87bDm.png)
(pardon the annotations -- I found it in a Stackexchange thread).

I challenge anyone to tell me what each one does (without testing first).

~~~
mopedDreams
>The Windows icon looks too much like Ubuntu to me

The definition of "Ubuntu" (from wikipedia):

"...is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean 'the belief in a
universal bond of sharing'..."

Also, I love the circular sharing icon if you see it as an overhead view of 3
people holding hands.

------
nob
I think this one is easy. We take the RSS icon and use it for sharing instead.
Such a waste to have such a good icon only be used for such a specific data
stream.

------
busterc
Just yesterday, while developing a Cordova hybrid app intended to target iOS,
Android & Windows Phone 8, this very notion became unsettlingly apparent for
me. BTW, [http://icons8.com](http://icons8.com) is a great place to do icon
recon.

Personally, I like the iOS 6 icon over the iOS 7 version. They're almost the
same, except the new one places too much emphasis on "up." For example, when
using the Meme Producer app and you want to save the picture to your photo
library, the app uses the iOS 7 "action" icon but it feels awkward to then
immediately go to the "download" icon to actually save.
[http://i.imgur.com/YtVd5WZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YtVd5WZ.jpg)

------
Pxtl
I'd think an arrow to the world would be the right icon, at least if you're
doing a "publicize". I think grouping email in with other forms of
broadcasting is part of the problem. I'd like to see two icons - one for
"broadcast" which would be arrow-to-world (for FB/Twitter/Instagram/etc), and
one for "send to a person" which would be an email-like letter icon, (for
direct-messaging, emails, SMS, etc). While it may be similar to us developers,
to a user the idea of "share" vs "send" is semantically different. "send"
operations have recipients. "share" operations do not.

------
adrianpike
The Windows 8 one is frighteningly similar to the Ubuntu logo.

~~~
windsurfer
For those wondering, The Ubuntu logo:
[http://i.imgur.com/eBSHg1U.png](http://i.imgur.com/eBSHg1U.png)

------
rssaddict
The author seems to contradict himself in the conclusion: while earlier he
states that the Android share icon is also used by ShareThis, and that
variations on it comprise the majority of search results for the term "share
icon", he then concludes by saying that the Apple/iOS icon is "suitable to use
in a general site/app", while the Android icon is "suitable to use in an
Android app".

I think the author's own greater familiarity with one icon (by virtue of being
an OSX/iOS user) has led him to make an overreaching conclusion about the
wider population.

------
jpswade
The open hand is more like serve or broadcast than share.

The outgoing or upload are nouns that don't mean share either.

The Google Android - three dots approach seems to be the simplest, most
logical, where one becomes two (or more).

------
gcb0
The solution clearly is to spin a SAS (share icon as a service) startup: offer
a single endpoint URL that returns one image of the requested size.

It will be a random share icon.

until we can measure how many times each user clicks on individual icons, and
optimize in the future to use that previously used icon for that user. After
some data collection period the user will be served the icon he identifies
more readily.

Some heuristics can be added initially, like showing the android icon if the
user agent is android for 90% instead of random.

Will be taking round A tomorrow by noon. thank you.

------
bluthru
When you're holding a mobile device, an up arrow is away from you and towards
others. Sharing essentially becomes sending. I think iOS 7's representation is
the most literal.

------
oldspiceman
Translating 'share' into chinese yields this nice character: 共

It's unique and memorable after you learn it. Not like the million other
arrows we have in icons.

~~~
gurkendoktor
Sharing is called 分享 on the Taiwanese Facebook (and in my dictionary).

I think I've only seen 共 in compounds for things that are already shared,
communal or co-existant, and notably as an abbreviation for communism. 中共 =
中國共產黨 = Chinese communist party. Not really a positive connotation. :)

(Disclaimer: Not a native speaker)

------
GraffitiTim
What do people think of an "Outgoing Speech Bubble" icon? Here's a quick
mockup I just did:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9f0w2tsrbc3c55/arrowbubble.png](https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9f0w2tsrbc3c55/arrowbubble.png)

and at 32px wide:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe6t169zgobdwih/arrowbubble-
small....](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe6t169zgobdwih/arrowbubble-small.png)

------
cratermoon
As a reluctant social media user, I think a can of SPAM would be perfect.

~~~
tjohns
You can share content via email too. It's not just for new social media sites.

(I'm actually not sure if this makes your SPAM analogy more or less
appropriate.)

~~~
abruzzi
what I don't like about the explosion of share menus us that email has been
subordinated to the share menu. I may be a constituency of one, but email is
the only way I share. So instead of tapping or clicking "email", I have to tap
"share" then email.

------
hyperion2010
What is amazing to me is that when I ctrf-f for 'publish' on this page I get
not a single hit (in tfa or these comments).

A huge part of what 'sharing' is today is actually publishing albeit to a
controlled group of people. Often on social sites sharing is in fact
publishing in the classic sense since many posts are public.

I wonder whether this is a branding thing. 'Sharing' seems to be a more
intimate and special or exclusive one-one activity (think secrets), while
'publishing' seems to be a far more public one-many activity. Strange then
that so many companies try to use 'share' to cover many to one. I guess you
can 'share' a story around a campfire, but again, you probably know everyone
you are sharing with.

Given the association of sharing with familiarity I think it is quite devious
of companies to use such a term to describe an activity which is actually
publishing.

------
craigc
This article reminds me of conversations that we had at Vimeo when redesigning
our video player.

Our previous share icon was two arrows facing diagonally in opposite
directions. The main problem with that was that it was very close to our
"embed" icon. We knew we wanted to change it, but we didn't know what icon to
use.

We had a bunch of mockups that included some of the icons found in this
article.

Ultimately, we ended up deciding on a paper airplane. It definitely is
familiar to people in terms of sending email, but we also thought it was a
playful and fun way to indicate sharing. Really it was the only icon that we
all liked.

It might not be immediately clear at first, but hopefully after using it you
get the hang of it.

You can check it out here:
[https://vimeo.com/76979871](https://vimeo.com/76979871)

And yes, I am the one in the opening shot of the video who throws the airplane
:)

~~~
ghostly_s
I don't think I've used it, but it would have never occurred to me that the
paper plane icon did anything other than send an email. Of course I'm one of
those weirdos that just copies a URL when I want to share something.

~~~
yincrash
It's interesting that email send is your take away from that because Android's
send icon[1] is also a paper airplane (or at least that's how I interpret the
icon.)

[1] [http://i.stack.imgur.com/Jg4vi.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Jg4vi.png)

------
bztzt
Incidentally, early prerelease versions of Windows 8 used the "Open Share"
icon:
[http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/195351i26jesbggjt18g0i...](http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/195351i26jesbggjt18g0i.jpg)
; wonder why they changed it.

~~~
spb
Probably Microsoft's traditional "submarine patent fears" excuse for NIH.

------
hashbanged
I like this article, and I tend to agree with its conclusions about which ones
are most common on most platforms, but isn't this at best heuristics and at
worst wrong assumptions?

Like, I would use these as my heuristic guidelines if I was on the job and
constraints dictate that I can't spend time on researching icons. But I
wouldn't write a blog post authoritatively telling people that one icon is
more recognized that the other without having some kind of research to back it
up.

Then again, the author does say at one point that their research is extremely
informal, so maybe I'm just projecting my feelings about the cowboy nature of
the UX profession right now. But I still feel like they could do more to
qualify that these just appear to be their best guesses about how people
interpret the share icon.

------
tjohns
The author seems to be quite fond of Apple's iOS6-era Share icon. It would be
interesting to ask somebody who isn't familiar with Apple's products what that
icon means. I've always found it a bit confusing.

In general, this kind of thing would actually be a interesting research
project.

------
Tloewald
The writer misses the fact that Apple has a more general and consistent
concept of "sharing" (and has had consistently for nearly a decade -- before
iOS and before the iOS sharing icon) than the others.

Share -- exemplified by iPhoto -- means share _by_ _any_ _means_ (e.g. email,
youtube, twitter, facebook, burning a DVD). Thus, Apple's icon makes perfect
sense -- more sense than the Y -- based on this. You might be sharing with one
specific person, or everyone. The point is that you're sending stuff OUT.

Most of the others treat sharing as something special that is "distribute by
any method except the other things we have icons for".

------
piokoch
That's very interesting indeed.

In the old days Microsoft was creating an icon and everybody used that,
otherwise people would not understand what a given button is doing. Web and
mobile devices with multiple os changed all that.

Another thing is how much iconized guis are. In theory it would be enough to
create an icon with "Share" written on it. Nobody even tries that now, not
even icon + text.

This is also a beautiful example of how much text/speech is sometimes more
powerfull then picture. It seems that not always "picture is worth a thousand
words".

------
nezza-_-
It would be interesting to ask people if they recognise what the "Milkshake-
icon" represents.. I don't think "A drink with two straws" would've been my
first guess.

------
spb
[http://i.imgur.com/80fMIju.png](http://i.imgur.com/80fMIju.png) \- here's a
quick mockup I made in Inkscape of the best icon I know for "share". It's two
people handing something off to each other.

When I was a kid, this is what I thought the old "Find" binoculars icon from
Microsoft Word / Netscape was. It seems to me that an icon that brings this
association _inadvertently_ is better than a contrived abstract symbol that
requires _explanation_.

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phkahler
The larger question: All platforms seem to eventually converge on icons to
some extent. What I see here is that the concept of sharing is new, and I
don't think that's limited to computer uses. We live in a very competitive
world where we consume, buy, compete. Sure we share things, but we
discriminate in the physical world. I think the notion of sharing non
discriminately with ALL our connections is fundamentally new and this is
contributing to the lack of a standard symbol.

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alexvr
Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who cringes at the sight of the iOS Safari
share icon. My brain starts panicking a little while trying to decipher its
meaning.

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wunderlust
While the milkshake icon is in part for humor, it doesn't represent the same
concept that the other icons represent. The acts of 'sharing' a piece of music
and 'sharing' a milkshake are different. When people share a milkshake, the
implication is that they're both there drinking it. Sharing a milkshake like
you'd share an article would be to give the milkshake to someone else. You
wouldn't even need two straws.

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anshublog
Me likes iOS. It seems to be the easiest for me to understand.

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Glyptodon
The milkshake idea was in my head before I even got to the section where the
writer mentioned it, so it's at least got some sort of universality (for an
American).

It also makes sense to me because I most frequently want to share specific
things with specific people rather than everyone.

I wonder if there might be two different share icons - one to share with
someone specific, and one to share with the world at large.

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dotnick
_> Overall, the idea of this design is not immediately intuitive and the
association of sharing with this symbol is purely because users have learned
what it means over time._

I honestly believe that this is the case for all the icons. As an Android user
and developer, I wouldn't associate the box with the up arrow with a "share"
action, much less the Windows 8 circle thing.

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ChuckMcM
I always thought a megaphone pointed at a rendition of the world would be a
great sharing icon. But its too complex to render easily.

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paul_milovanov
Can't believe nobody has thought of a syringe with a needle as a metaphor for
sharing. </sarcasm>

Ok, ok, how about wrapped candy?

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ddebernardy
It is quite telling that the article itself, towards the very bottom, prompts
to share with facebook, twitter and google+ buttons -- but no share icon of
any sort.

For good reasons, too: when you want to share something, you invariably want
to do so in a specific manner, meaning email, FB, twitter, HN, etc., rather
than plain "share".

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jbranchaud
There is a cultural component here as well. How do you create an icon that
represents _sharing_ across many cultures and many countries? I am thinking of
things like Facebook and mobile devices.

For instance, while the milkshake icon is an interesting new approach, I
wonder how much sense it makes in many cultures and countries.

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breadbox
There is no doubt in my mind that the "milkshake" one is the most sticky, and
once it caught on people would definitely remember it, which is really what
you need to make an icon become universal. Getting it to catch on in the first
place ... that's probably not going to happen.

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gukov
Not a fan of icons with a grid or connected dots. To me that means "viral."
Usually I don't care whether the video goes viral, I just want my friends to
see it, a one-to-many connection. How about a megaphone?

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sammyd56
For me 'sharing' is about communicating, about passing on a message. A speech
bubble is the best representation in my mind... but that is already used for
comments.

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mncolinlee
The first time I saw the iOS "uploader" icon on my iPad, I thought for certain
that it was for Up navigation in the app. There's nothing intuitive about it.

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spankalee
I really prefer the "many people" icon, and disagree that it should only mean
collaboration. I think it has the least abstract form and most intuitive
meaning.

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harsh1618
The Windows share button and the Ubuntu logo aren't abstract as the article
claims. It's a top view of three people standing in a circle and holding
hands.

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melloclello
I feel like if somebody did what Apple did for the cloud icon (i.e., came up
with a canonical geometric representation[1]) to the 'Graph Diagram'[2]
mentioned in the article, then you'd find that everyone would just wind up
using that.

[1]
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEn...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx)

[2] [https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one-
agr...](https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one-agrees-
on#h1-9)

~~~
burnte
As noted in your first link, the concept of a circle based cloud was around in
the 70s on BBC, if not other places too. I drew one for my consulting firm in
2006, before Mobile Me adopted one.

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ajaymehta
I like the Y-shaped old Android logo, but for some reason I feel that it looks
upside-down. Could be one dot on top, with 2-3 arrows pointing downwards.

Fascinating article!

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Yetanfou
May I suggest an octopus, stretching its arms out, the tips curling around
hapless victims? Something resembling the NROL-39 logo [1] would do fine.

I tend to stay away from any 'Share', 'Mail', 'Like' and related buttons. If I
want to share something, I'll use my own server so that only those who I
intend to share with are party to the conversation.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches#mediaviewe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches#mediaviewer/File:Nrol-39.jpg)

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Nihei
I've always thought a megaphone would make for a good share symbol. It makes
much more sense (in my head) than most of these in the link.

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andreash
The "share-icon war". The new browser-war that will haunt us for years. We'll
be cross-device share icon compatibility experts.

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agumonkey
a small take on the subject
[http://imgur.com/a/rXXro#0](http://imgur.com/a/rXXro#0)

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baddox
Is this really a problem? It doesn't even seem like there is less consensus on
Share icons than for other common icons.

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gdubs
The box with arrow icon originated as an "action" icon -- like, "take some
action on this item".

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bitwize
Those "graph diagram" ones look like the Spathi Eluder to me. Not quite the
image that you want to invoke.

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s0me0ne
I like the hand icon, the milkshake might work but make the milk transparent
with a line for the top of it

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zuck9
If any Apple designer reading this, please propose on replacing the share icon
with a milkshake!

It's just perfect!

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4rt
on a tangent - when the hell did "zoom" and "search" icons become identical.

i find it confusing.

~~~
nandhp
It is a tangent, but here's a well-researched answer on UX Stack Exchange:
[http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/23645/8944](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/23645/8944)

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kzrdude
The open hand must actually have been a representation of _Serving_ files,
i.e. like a server.

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mlnhd
I thought this was going to be about how I don't agree the icon should exist
at all.

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cobralibre
A milkshake icon is certainly easier to draw than a Daniel Day-Lewis icon.

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gsmethells
Maybe it's the word "share" that needs changing instead.

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webkike
I think the icon most appropriate might be a fax machine

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egfx
What would be the best SHARE representation in Emoji???

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brainburn
No reason the icon can't be animated.

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higherpurpose
iOS7 one definitely conveys uploading. The Windows 8 one is just stupid.

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whoa-duder
Words, why not use words?

~~~
tendom
Not an expert, but reasons I've discovered over my career: 1\. Because words
take up a significant amount of space. On mobile, icons improve the
experience. 2\. Words in other languages can destroy layouts, meaning
customizing style for each language. For instance, potato in english is pomme
de terre(apple of the earth) in Canadian French. Some other languages I've
worked with are much worse. English can be very terse it turns out. 3\. Drop
down menus require more clicks than a toolbar. Word toolbars without images
either read like a sentence and are confusing, or they are well padded and
then will take even more space. 4\. Pictures can be more accessible to many
people (if done correctly) 5\. Our brains react to icon faster than to words.
We actually store words and icons differently as well. 6\. Reading is hard,
and expends more energy. Really. It has to do with the above.

