Facebook’s new “via” sharing functionality (think Twitter’s retweet button) has been reported for days (InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon writes here) but last night was first time that I had seen it in the wild (after much looking). Three thoughts on the functionality:

1. I like it a lot. I think it is a natural evolution of sharing and always found the lack of ‘finder’s attribution’ slightly strange.

2. I think the UI needs to be improved. Both in the feed and during publishing, the word “via” does not stand out; in fact, it is difficult to distinguish between the bold names of the two friends. I also think that the name following the “via” is too bold annd distracting. I would probably rather see it all within a parentheses or below the post?

3. And I would also like to see who else shared that post. In the screenshots below, notice that two of my friends shared the same posts from the same person. It would powerful and interesting to see the collection of sharers from a single source.

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