Facebook 107: Sharing Web Pages with Friends

Part of the power of Facebook is that it makes sharing information with your friends extremely easy. Within Facebook, for example, you can use the Chat feature for instant messaging, and the “Send a Message” function is a lot like a web-based e-mail service.

But there’s an even better feature that let’s you easily share anything on the Web (as long as it has a unique URL), with any of your Facebook friends.

And you can do it either actively or passively.

Say, for instance, you think the 10 Steps to Your Own Free Podcast program is the most wonderful way to learn about podcasting. Or you have a friend who is interested in trying scleral contact lenses so you want to send her a video.

You could copy the URL and paste it into an e-mail message. Or in the case of the YouTube video, you can share it by entering a friend’s e-mail address (or if you have an account, it you can save those addresses in your YouTube or Gmail address book.)

But with Facebook, sharing is simple – no matter what kind of page it is. Here are the steps:

1. Join Facebook if you haven’t already done so. Make sure you’re logged in.

2. Visit the Sharing Options Page by clicking this link. You’ll see this page:

3. Follow the instructions, dragging the bookmarklet to the toolbar. The Facebook instructions will walk you through it (and it might look a little different in Windows.) You will get a chance to name the bookmarklet like this:

Then your Toolbar will look something like this:

Not too hard so far, is it?

Well, it gets even easier from here.

Now, whatever page you want to share, you can do it right from the page you’re visiting. All you have to do is click the “Share on Facebook” link in your toolbar.

So, if you were on the 10 Steps to Your Own Free Podcast post, when you click “Share on Facebook” you would see this dialog:

Then you can start typing in the names of specific friends or friend lists, along with a message to accompany the link:

No need to remember anyone’s e-mail address. Just type their names, a brief message, and hit send.

If you don’t want to send to anyone in particular, but just think a page is cool and want to call attention to it, you can choose the Post to Profile option, like this:

When you do that and hit post, the item shows up in your mini-feed like this:

And of course, some of the items from your mini-feed show up in your friends’ News Feeds.

Assignments:

1. Add the Share on Facebook bookmarklet to your browser’s Toolbar.
2. Use the bookmarklet to share a couple of Web pages with your Facebook friends. Share one actively by sending directly to a few friends, and share another passively by posting it to your profile.