Facebook Gets Save and Share Extension on Chrome

Facebook has launched two new Chrome extensions that will allow users to put more content on the platform any website. Apart from these changes, the company has also redesigned its “like” button for webpages.

Facebook wants it to be a good experience for its users every time they share and save different content. The company said in its official blog post: “Sharing and saving great content are two things that people love to do when browsing the web. Improving this experience for people drives greater engagement and distribution of content for sites and keeps visitors coming back for more.”

Facebook users will now have the liberty to use two new Chrome extensions. Through one of the extension called Share to Facebook, users can easily share different content from websites to their Newsfeed, Groups, and Messenger. The other extension allows users to save websites for surfing through Save to Facebook option.

Share to Facebook Chrome extension has a Facebook icon next to the web address bar in the browser. It can be clicked to share any content as it directs users to a new window that will have the link that needs to be shared. Users can add their personal messages along with the content. Once the extensions have been added, users can retrieve articles through their Facebook homepage from the bookmarks tab. They will be notified about the articles that have been recently saved so they view them first.

Through the Save to Facebook extension, any content that a user might want to go through later can be saved. Users can save articles and can retrieve them instantly later on without wasting any time searching for them. The feature acts like a bookmark for all the saved content as it gives access to all such content instantly.

The feature has grown gradually since it was launched in 2014. It currently has more than 300 million monthly active users (MAUs).

The steps taken by Facebook to make sharing and saving easy are done to help the publishers. This way, publishers will have more traffic on their websites as people will share their links directly through an extension. Publishers themselves may put in their efforts to publish such articles through Instant Articles or Facebook pages so that they can also take advantage of Facebook’s ad business.

Apart from that, there are also changes done to Facebook’s Like button that we see on websites every day. The company will soon ditch its logo and will replace it with the thumbs up icon. The decision to replace the logo was taken after the company realized that thumbs up button increases user engagement as compared to the logo.

The like count for the page will also appear with the new thumbs up icon unlike the previous design where both the like and unlike count were shown separately. The company has also made changes to other social sharing icons as well that include Send, Recommend, Save, Follow, and Share. These changes are being done as 30% of the Like button impressions come from mobile phones.

These new buttons are set to redefine the social norms for Facebook. The company expects that with these new icons and design, it will be able to create an engaging environment for its users. In the near future, it will also start to integrate these social buttons within the instant articles.