Facebook launched a new share button, one that can keep statistics to the url you provide it! This is great news for people that like to track data regarding their share efforts on facebook. It’s basically a small database that stores information (see below) about a url so you can do all sorts of euhm… stuff with it.

They have a share button for it which looks like this (the number means how many times this item is shared):

They also provide a slightly less subtle button that places the amount something is shared on top of the button. To make it even more easy they made a generator for it: the share widget.

Here’s what you can track:

- How many… Users share the link on Facebook.
- How many… Users “like” the shared story.
- How many… Users comment on the shared story on Facebook.
- How many… Users click back to your site from the story.

There is also a browser call to it, which is an awesome little thingy for flash/flex applications since it returns an xml.

note: Be sure to URL encode the link in your applications!

Some additional information about the facebook share can be found on the facebook developer blog.