As if the differences between the Facebook “Like” and “Share” buttons weren’t confusing enough, our good friends at Facebook threw a new button into the mix today called “Send”. My initial reaction wasn’t positive, but this button is pretty sweet.

First off, we were able to implement the new button on our site in about a half hour, and most of that time was spent testing it across platforms and browsers. This was an extremely pleasant surprise . When Facebook first launched the “Like” button, it was plagued with bugs, and we spent a lot of time troubleshooting issues that were on Facebook’s end. This is one of the reasons my initial reaction to the new button was not one of optimism.

Second, the “Send” button functionality really fulfills a need – the need to share web content with a select group of friends, instead of everyone you know on Facebook. When you “Like” something, that content goes out to everyone you’re friends with through the Newsfeed. When you click the “Send” button, you’re presented with a pop-up window allowing you to choose the friends you want to share the web content with. You can “Send” content to everyone on your friends list, a group, or just a few folks. Whomever you “Send” the content to will receive it as a Facebook message, and you can include comments.

As for the “Share” button, Facebook stopped enhancing and maintaining the code a while back, and they plan to put it out to pasture in the future. The “Share” button is basically version 1 of the “Like” button.

Now if Facebook would only create a “Live Forever” button…