NewsThe Share Button War Begins

The Share Button War Begins

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Share buttons are everywhere, and one’s available for every major aggregator and social networking site, but now a war is being set in motion to conquer that slice Web space real estate.

Toolbar company Meebo is proposing a new standard that solves the “Nascar problem” (logos splattered across the Web site) by detecting which networks you’re logged into and displaying only those icons, Pete Cashmore at Mashable reported today.

For some reason, Meebo is calling their application “XAuth” even though that name is already used by an X server authentication application – confusing and not original.

But the problem for Meebo isn’t just the name, Cashmore said that Facebook and Twitter are not supporting their XAuth concept yet.

“And Facebook is unlikely to play along: the company would much rather dominate the sharing space,” Cashmore explained. “On Wednesday at the F8 conference, Facebook will launch a product that aims to spread its ‘Like’ button across the entire web. Facebook will also launch a website toolbar, reports The Times, hoping to kill off Meebo’s share bar.”

This is a war to see who will dominate a relatively small portion of Web real estate, but one that effects literally billions of page views every month.

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