The Facebook Blog

Gone are the days of gawking at celebrities on people.com without being able to share the link with Facebook friends in two clicks. No longer do we live in a world in which we're required to shuffle through email addresses or scour through AIM buddy lists in order to share the glorious content of an article on theonion.com.

Starting today, there are links to share on Facebook planted all across the Internet, from the articles at Time to the videos at Photobucket.

The... idea is that when you're reading or watching something that you think is cool, you don't have to copy and paste the URL back into Facebook in order to share the link with your friends. Instead, with one click you get to check out a preview, choose how you want to share it, and then distribute it. You can share content with anyone, even people who aren't on Facebook yet.

These links are only the beginning. They will continue to pop up on more sites in the coming weeks. And you don't have to be a highly trafficked website in order to get these links on your pages. In the spirit of equal opportunity, we've written out instructions on how to add the link to any site on the Internet.

If you haven't yet checked out the sharing functionality on Facebook, you can get more information on it here.

Chris, the project manager for Share, has had a 34.75% decrease in productivity due to videos posted on his friends' profiles.

This Share Box will pop-up whenever you Share something. You can Share items from Facebook and from other sites.

Ever since this whole Internet thing got started, people have been sharing stuff left and right. In the late 90s, music on Napster and flashy chain mail was all the rage. These days, it's more likely to be a video mashup of someone aging or photos from last night's party that no one ever remembers being taken.

Regardless of what it is you want to share, starting today you can do it efficiently and easily on Facebook. Now when you... find something on the Internet that you think is cool—articles, photos, videos, and so on—you can paste the link into a field on the My Shares page and then choose to send a preview of the page directly to friends or post it up on your profile. Same goes for stuff that you find on Facebook—you can click on a "Share" link that sits next to all content and send it around to people or post it up on your profile for all the world (well, everyone who can see your profile) to see. To get started, check out our tutorial.

The Share bookmarklet in the bookmark bar. When you're on other sites, you don't have to copy and paste urls in order to share them.

One of the best things about this new feature is a "bookmarklet" tool we've developed. You can drop this tool onto the bookmark bar at the top of your browser and then click on it whenever you run across something cool outside Facebook. You'll be able to check out a preview and make some choices and then send it along, all without leaving the window with the content that you wanted to share in the first place.

This is what will show up in your Mini-Feed when you share something by posting it to your profile.

When you share something directly with your friends, it's completely private, like sending them a Facebook message. When you choose to share by posting something on your profile, it's something that you are choosing to make public, so it shows up in your Mini-Feed, and may create a News Feed story for some of your friends.

The addition of Share does not change your privacy settings in any way. As always, no one will be able to see any information about you unless your privacy settings allow it. If you want to change your privacy at any time, go to the My Privacy page. Also, we've updated our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy as a result of these feature additions.

As a mark of due respect to all the kindergarten teachers of the world, go forth and share.

Chris, the project manager for Share, loves that he can be meta and share Share with the world.