Towards better sharing

Facebook seems to have dramatically ramped up the extent to which people share links with each other over the internet.

Of course, people shared links with each other before Facebook - but not with quite the same frequency. Facebook gives automatic thumbnail images, descriptive text and titles to links quicker than ever before - and the extent to which people share links appears to me to have skyrocketed.

Facebook's "like" button was another overdue innovation - working along similar lines.

Of course all this sharing is pretty good for the memes that are being shared. They are more numerous and more viral as a result.

Could things be further improved? Yes!

• Image handling is still very primitive. It should not make users press left and right buttons to preview possible images, but rather display them in a gallery. Images should be flippable, mirrorable, editable, and there should be "add your own image" and use shrunken page view options.

• Sucking in the first few lines of text could be improved on too.

The presentation of the results could also be greatly improved, with better filtering, sorting and search options.

Facilitating the sharing of links is a significant contribution to the planet's collective intelligence.