Facebook launched its Send button last month, which they hope will improve the way Groups function as well as replace the old “email to a friend” button. The new “Send” button has the same look and feel as the Like button. Click on Send and a pop-up appears (see screenshot above), allowing you to send that article or page to friends, groups or any email address. You can then add a message and send the page to friends’ inboxes or post it to a Group wall.

The button, as product manager Austin Haugen explains, is designed to make it easier for users to share content with close groups of friends on Facebook. He cited an increasingly popular trend: users posting a commerce site to a Group to figure out what gift to buy for a friend.

Another important detail: Send counts toward the total number of Likes a page has. The Like total is now calculated by adding the number of Likes, shares, comments and inbox messages containing a URL.

Many of the websites regularly visited by millions have already added the Send button, including Gilt Groupe, 1-800-Flowers, The Wall Street Journal, Orbitz, Last.fm, The Huffington Post, People.com and The Washington Post. The Send button’s code is also now available on Facebook’s Developer Website. And as with the Like button, it only takes a few lines of code to get the Send button running on your website.

If the adoption by major sites so far is any indication, Send will become Facebook’s next Like button — which is installed on more than 10,000 websites every week. The Send button is a companion to the Like button, focused on private sharing rather than public sharing features. And since Send includes the ability to share articles via email, the old “email to a friend” functionality available on millions of websites is rendered obsolete.

Will the Send button show up around the internet as often as the Like button has? Are you using these buttons to integrate Facebook on your website? Let us know in the comments.

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