Of the 7 bookmarklets I have installed on my web browser, the Facebook Share one is the one I use the least. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of sharing stuff on Facebook, but the Share functionality is too slow and too clunky. Today, Facebook is trying to improve it — but it’s still won’t be as good as the functionality of the company it just bought, FriendFeed.
From what it has written on its Facebook Developers site today, it sounds like most of the Share changes will be happening functionality for buttons partners can install on their sites. If you have a Share button installed, for example, users should see a dialog box that pops up to post an item to their profile. The dialog box is said to be “more consistent with other forms of sharing on Facebook.”
The problem is that it’s still nowhere near as simple as it should be. For example, while it’s nice that it auto-pulls a thumbnail image, FriendFeed’s method of allowing you to click on any image on a page you are sharing is a much better way. Facebook’s thumbnail selector often pulls the wrong image and you’re stuck shuffling through random images on the page to find the one you want — as you can see in the preview image Facebook captured below, there are 17 possible images you can use.
Another nice feature of FriendFeed’s sharer is that it displays as an overlay on the web page you are on, rather than popping open a new small window (as Facebook’s does). FriendFeed’s functionality also makes it easy to send as a message to other users all from within the same screen, rather than having to click over to a separate window to send what you are sharing as a message to a user.
Facebook’s “What’s on your mind” comment area is also confusing. That would seem to imply that you should state what is on your mind (a status update) rather than comment on the item you are sharing. FriendFeed’s comment area simply has a comment icon and the note “Add a comment” — a subtle difference, but still nicer.
Finally, FriendFeed’s sharer gives you the ability to use it as a send-to-Twitter bookmarklet as well. Basically, if you select the “Cc: Twitter” box, it will send the item to both FriendFeed and Twitter (and it can link directly to the source rather than back to FriendFeed if you have that option set). Facebook, obviously, offers no such option.
The point is that if Facebook really wants to improve its Share functionality on sites outside of Facebook, it needs to make the process faster and cleaner. In other words, it needs to use its new acquired FriendFeed guys and get them to replicate their FriendFeed button. Facebook Connect is a very powerful pipeline from the web to Facebook, but that doesn’t matter if some of the pipes to and from it are clogged.
I think a lot of problems rest with how FB reads the HTML Markup of the page that’s gonna be shared. 50% of the problem rests with the owner of the shared page who for the myriad colours of grey, white, black, blue SEO has infested keywords, image alts etc which make the FB Share look clunky sometimes.
The FriendFeed team right now would be settling in and finding their way to the FB Cafe, Loo and tech ops to get lots of “migration and replication”
Amazing!Half of Our World’s population is covered by the social network teams in which Facebook and Friendfeed have a great place. The improvement of the network depends upon the team which builds them. Generally people’s mindset goes to the user friendly networks. In that way, Friendfeed is a little better off. So Facebook, needs to make the process faster and cleaner to compete with Friendfeed.
I dont think removing pop-up windows is going to be of any use.
FriendFeed Vs. Facebook. !!
Maybe Facebook lacks some options that FriendFeed has, but Facebook remains in the top position. The improvisation measures will sure promote Facebook to master worldwide with its best sharing features.
I still don’t understand why it won’t let me share to one of my Pages as well. Seems like an obvious win.
I also HATE the FB popups. They use that for everything. For instance the friend’s list. If you have over 100 friends, scrolling through a 400×300 box is really annoying. Can’t they limit the popups to just messages?
+100, that’s the most annoying thing about Facebook in my opinion.
I agree. Wholeheartedly
>it sounds like most of the Share changes will be happening functionality for buttons partners can install on their sites
huh?
I think he means the little ‘f’ buttons that blogs and news sites usually have after their articles. But, that’s just a guess.
yep, that’s right.
I sticking to my guns that FF will become FB Labs. Then people will say in comments when you share “How did you do that?” or there will be a “Like this? Here’s how you can do it too [link to FB Labs]“.
Or maybe I’m just wishing again.
I’m excited to see these changes roll out. It’s really embarrassing that Facebook has one of the worst sharing features. Facebook is supposed to be the leader in this kind of stuff!
I thought the same thing about the pop-up dialog being not so slick. It was surprising to me that it is not an HTML overlay like that of Faves.com or FriendFeed, both of which have been around for years and years.
Here’s to hoping that a lot more changes are coming.
i don’t like the big ads in facebook
Why aren’t you using Firefox with Adblock?
Simple post to Twitter bookmark: http://twurl.cja.org.uk. Anything else is unnecessarily complex.
Have long thought that the FriendFeed bookmarklet is the best in the business – I use it to shove things through FF to Twitter (and on to FB with the #fb thingy). Perfect in all respects, wish others would be as good at bookmarklets.
yes but face is better more against friendfeed.
I’m not convinced and agree that the Friendfeed version is superior with the share functionality. Facebook should unveil a URL shorterner as that would make it possible to reshare to other networks via the bookmarklet and make Facebook the standard..
Yes… I’m a sailor.