Facebook Takes Steps To Increase Users’ Sharing

Facebook developers may soon see more user interest than ever before, thanks to a site tweak.  The Facebook Share prompts have been altered in a way that Facebook thinks will have some significant effects.

A post on the Facebook Developers blog explains, "The new dialog includes all of the key features of Facebook Share — users can post a link to their profile or send it in a message to just a few friends, choose an image to include, and add a comment."

Then here’s the intended payoff: "We expect the new design will increase the amount of content shared as well as the traffic back to your sites."

Developers would view the extra traffic as a good thing, of course, and the promise of it may increase their interest in Facebook.  At the same time, if users are clicking on more stuff, they’ll have already taken the extra step.  All of which should do Facebook – and Facebook’s advertisers – some good.

As a slight side note: it’s not too likely that today’s development came as a result of Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, since 21 days would have been a pretty quick turnaround time.  So more changes may be on the way.