
Facebook - The Send Button, Because Sometimes It’s Private - Uncle_Sam
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/494
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nopinsight
This will accelerate the pace that Facebook replaces email for some users and
strengthen its position as an essential utility on the Internet. I believe the
advantage of not having to remember email addresses is very useful to many
people.

It seems Tim Berners Lee's worry about the effect of Facebook towards less
open Internet is getting more true than ever. Are there significant actions we
can do about this?

Large Internet email providers (Google, Yahoo, Hotmail) should come up with
something similar like address auto-fill on third-party sites (with
appropriate security & privacy implementation). They might even want to team
up to counter Facebook's rise--after all, Facebook is now one of their largest
competitors on the Net. (I am aware that Microsoft is an investor and partner
of Facebook; so Hotmail might be less likely to come on board.)

~~~
Hipchan
I think a social layer is inevitable, the way that people used to interact
with websites purely through urls today is too impersonal. What Facebook is
doing is creating a great abstraction layer to improve the UX of the web as a
whole.

Which is fantastic, except that it's Facebook.

Support an open competitor.

~~~
quizbiz
I think you're onto something and I think what we're seeing is the resurgence
of portals on the web. Reddit and Hacker News are niche content portals.
Facebook is in a position to be a mass market portal to the entire web.

Competition is a matter of time and people's purpose driven browsing will
continue to push people to various sources.

I'm not sure what you mean by an open competitor.

~~~
mtw
he means projects like diaspora

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StavrosK
Shameless plug: If you like this functionality and don't want to wait for
sites to implement it, use <http://www.yourpane.com>, it's a free alternative
I wrote that doesn't rely on a webmaster installing it and you can view all
the submissions in one place.

~~~
tuhin
Duplicate comment: Reposted so that context is maintained

Ok I tried the product and here are my suggestions:

1) Use Google Connect/Yahoo or something so that you can access my Contacts
list

2) It is the same as opening a browser window with email app since the
contacts are not there already or shown in a dropdown.

3)The problem is not that I have to move away from the page to share it. The
pain comes in moving away and doing stuff. If I have to move away to find that
one email id, it is of no use.

4) Who would save Contacts in a seperate list? No CSV Upload is not the
solution.

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StavrosK
1) That seems to be requested a lot, so I'll add it.

2) The contacts are there when you add them, so you just click them. Have you
tried the "Contacts" page?

3) You don't have to move away, the bookmarklet appears in a lightbox. Are you
sure you aren't just using the "Send" page?

4) This is true, but this is more targeted to a few of your friends rather
than everyone, and adding everyone would clutter the list more than help, I
think...

Thanks for the feedback!

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zach
Fantastic. This is just what I've been waiting for to implement on my
location-based sites.

Houses for sale and homes you're going to a party at are rarely appropriate
"Like" candidates.

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jetz
We've been developing a web app (<http://tusulog.com>) to address this "need"
in addition to others. Our app allows your public timeline (like Twitter) and
groups concept. You can have public, anon and private groups. Private groups
are just like FB groups. Even if FB Groups seem to be more than sufficient, we
think FB pages have become very cluttered. Furthermore, they couldn't have
nailed it (I don't know why): 50m groups for 700m users is not much and humans
communicate mostly by group/network basis. In other words, you don't speak to
family the same you speak to school friends.

We haven't done any PR/promotion work and I want to ask your comments about
how should we compete against the Goliaths?

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CWIZO
This feature sounds great on paper. But it means adding yet another FB
dependency (or third-party if you will) to my web page, and that means more
stuff for users to download. It also clutters the UI and placing it on a page
can sometimes be a mayor PITA, depending on the layout of your page, and the
last thing I want is to redesign parts of my pages yet again because FB
released a new button. You can always choose not to use it, but we all know
how that is with search-driven traffic. Now days if you don't have FB's like
button it's like putting "Disallow: *" in your robots.txt. And it will
(probably) be the same with this "send" button.

I just wish they'd figured out a way to combine the two.

~~~
StavrosK
You can use www.yourpane.com, it does the exact same thing but with no
installation necessary...

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FiddlerClamp
Well, it's still sending data through Facebook. If you want to send things,
why not put a bookmarklet to your email account in the bookmark bar of your
browser?

~~~
patio11
I can send email easily. My customers can't. Improving their ability to mail
on my behalf might be a win.

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jbert
Is this useful because of the decline of email (pverty of address books)?

Or because of the difficulty in hooking mailto: links to webmail services?

~~~
tuhin
This is useful because I cannot remember the emails of all my friends and also
the default email share widget does not know them either.

This was something ideally Google should have come up with but never mind!

~~~
StavrosK
It's what www.yourpane.com does, but when I submitted it here I got little to
no love...

~~~
mtw
I think your main graphic doesn't explain at all your service. you should
animate it (use flash) or use a javascript gallery so people know exactly what
it is

or maybe the advantages are not clear at all. everyone can already share links
through skype, msn or email or facebook so it's not clear why they'd need
yourpane

I know the feeling of working so hard on a project and then apparently nobody
notices. It doesn't mean your idea or vision sucks, starting a service takes
determination. Applies to 99% of developers, and only 1% gets on the frontpage
of HN, because they took a lot of time to craft simple and efficient copy and
design, and also took a lot of time to think about the features

~~~
StavrosK
I agree with you on the graphic, it does need a bit more explanation.

The purpose of the service is to complement IM, for when you want to share
things with people who aren't on IM right now or don't want to be bothered (or
sharing with multiple people). You send a link to the people you want, they
get to it on their own time.

A crucial feature that is sort-of missing is the ability to comment on links,
because sending links is an inherently social act. I'll work on this more if
people start using the service, but there are a few problems due to the way
the service works.

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simonw
I thought Facebook were phasing out XFBML?

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avree
Yeah, it's a little confusing considering here
(<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fbml/>) they mention that they
are deprecating FBML and "won't be adding any new features".

~~~
ccheever
XFBML is different from FBML

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trickjarrett
I implemented this button as soon as I read about it, I wish there was some
way to track how much it is used.

~~~
hailpixel
Enabling Facebook Insights for your site does just that:
<http://www.facebook.com/insights/>. Just 'add' your domain.

~~~
trickjarrett
Oh wow! That's huge, I have no idea how I didn't know this.

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glenjamin
I'm fairly amused that the blogpost itself doesn't feature a send button, just
a "Like" button!

