Facebook Improves Groups, Adds ‘Send’ Button

Facebook Groups, launched just six months ago, was designed to make it easier for the social network’s 500 million users to share information with a subset of their friends. Rather than share embarrassing pics of your Vegas bacchanalia with Mom, Dad, and your boss, you could limit their exposure to a smaller, more receptive group, such as your roommates–or cellmates.

Groups has proven a success thus far, with users creating over 50 million groups since the feature’s October 2010 debut, Facebook announced in a Monday blog post. And now Groups is adding several new features, including the ability to post questions and polls that only members can respond to.

You can now save time by uploading an entire picture album to a group, rather than individual photos. There’s also a new control that lets a group owner approve people before adding them to the group.

The new Facebook Send button is an offshoot of the venerable ‘Like’ feature, which makes it easy to share your favorite Web content with friends. Send, in fact, is simply Like for a subset of friends–perhaps one or two people who may find a particularly article or service interesting.

The Send window lets you enter a friend’s name, group, or email address, as well as a personal message. It replaces the “email to a friend” button.

More than 50 major websites currently feature the Send button, Facebook says, with many more to follow.