New Facebook Share Tour

If you use facebook to share content with friends, family and perhaps even prospective clients, then you have no doubt noticed some changes in the facebook interface recently, most notably how facebook supports (or in some cases doesn’t support) easy content sharing.

Maybe you’ve noticed on one of your recent facebook logins that there’s been some changes, most notably to the news feed status share feature which has been updated by facebook. You’ll notice some new buttons across the top of the news feed status share window. I’ve created a quick new Facebook share tour based on the one that is now being offered by facebook to its users to introduce its new share feature.

For those readers here that always forego the book to wait for the movie, this new facebook share feature tour video is dedicated to you:

The tour covers three aspects the new facebook share feature:

The first feature of the new facebook share is the ability to tag other facebook users. In fact, users can click this button to add tags of your friends or anyone else on facebook. Adding a tag instantly creates a link to the person’s profile and may share your post with their friends. This is similar in concept and application to how you could tag friends in status updates and comments in the previous facebook share. You might have experienced where facebook would type ahead matching names in your facebook network when typing status or comments.

The second feature of the new facebook share allows users to add location information to their facebook status. In essence, enabling facebook users to geo-code their status updates. Using this new location-based share feature, users can easily share what city or neighborhood they’re in with each post, or share a particular place, like an attraction, business, park or pub.

The third feature of the new facebook share enables users to manage privacy settings of their status at an individual status-level right where they post without having to navigate to another page to set or reset privacy settings. Users can choose who sees their status updates, photos and profile information using the inline audience selector when you share. If mistakes need to be corrected after sharing, users can change the privacy settings using this new feature.

Facebook positions its new share feature as a user benefit by proving privacy controls closer to the front line, where users share information and content, claiming to simplify the user experience and management of privacy settings.

Facebook users will also notice that the new facebook share feature does not include the share link capability that existed in the prior facebook share functionality. If you’re a frequent link poster on facebook like many of us are, this is probably the first thing that you noticed even, before the facebook tour was offered.

Now, if a user wants to post a link using the new facebook share, they must post the link in the body of the status update and then facebook will interpret that as a link as facebook deems appropriate when displaying in the news feeds of other facebook users and in your profile.

The optimist in me says that there could be interesting applications of associating location and people tagging right in the context of a facebook status update while also setting privacy at a post-level right from the share interface. The pessimist in me however, says that facebook is pushing this functionality on users to drive tighter control over link sharing in an effort to combat link spam which no doubt plagues many facebook users impacting their personal facebook experience.

Regardless of the driver for the new share feature, users were not asked by facebook whether or not they wanted to adopt this new feature so therefore the only logical choice is to not use facebook if you don’t like the new share feature, or at least not share anything else on facebook (don’t bet on it!).

eBiz ROI is interested in your feedback of whether or not the new facebook share feature has been rolled out to your facebook profile and if so what you think of it so far. It will be interesting to see how users adopt and use the new share features. It will also be interesting to see whether or not facebook sharing, in aggregate, is positively or negatively impacted by this new “sharing enhancement”.

As always, if you have any questions about facebook and how to use it to effectively promote your business online, you can contact an eBiz ROI, Inc. representative at sales@eBizROI.com, +1 (518) 557-3052 or online at www.eBizROI.com. We look forward to hearing from you.