Will the 'email to a friend' functionality featured on many websites be coming to an end?  The new Facebook 'send' button hopes so.

Facebook announced yesterday that a send button has joined the like button.  According to Facebook, "the Send button is a social plugin that websites can use to let people send a link to a friend through Facebook Messages, post it to a Group, or email it to an individual."  A big advantage over the traditional 'email to a friend' option is that you don't need to leave the page you are reading or fill out any forms.  If you want to send a page to someone who is not on Facebook, you can still enter an email address with the send button.  

A very important detail to note about the send button: the number of times a page is sent counts towards the number of likes displayed on the page.  Facebook will soon provide real-time metrics for the send button in your Insights Dashboard.  Once released, you will be able to see the number of send button impressions, messages, and referral clicks to your site.

The importance of this new feature for small businesses and marketers is that it provides another way for your content to easily be shared and attract new traffic to your site. It will also give you more data about the types of content that draw the attention of your audience, which can only help you and your marketing plan.

The send button launched on 50 sites yesterday.  Shortly after the announcement, we tested it on a few sites (including ours) and made it live on several sites last night.  You can check it out below!