LinkedIn launches share button for the Web

Now you can "inShare" after you Like, Tweet, Buzz, Digg, Stumble and more

Here at VatorNews, we’re keeping it simple. If you want to share this article, you need only click the Facebook “Like” button or the Twitter “Tweet” button (or both), both of which are located in plain sight right above my avatar. Of course, we could add many more widgets: Google Buzz, Digg, StumbleUpon, email, RSS, and on and on.

But every publisher has to pick and choose which widgets are the most important; it’s aesthetically displeasing and pretty much impossible to collect them all. Well, now there’s a new one to choose from.

LinkedIn launched Tuesday its own share button, which reads “in Share,” to encourage users across the Web to share content with the 85 million-strong professional network.

How does LinkedIn justify yet another share button for the Web? Senior product manager Liz Reaves Walker explains:

“We know there are a lot of options for sharing content today, whether it’s on Twitter or Facebook. And, now with our new LinkedIn’s share button, we’d like to offer readers an effective way to share relevant professional content – news, thought pieces, white papers, or presentations on slideshare – with their business network on LinkedIn.”

It turns out that their argument for a LinkedIn share button, naturally enough, is similar to CEO Jeff Weiner’s argument at Web 2.0 Summit for LinkedIn’s entire existence: “keg stands.” Facebook has an influential social graph and many users will probably prefer the Like button to share Web content with friends, but when it comes to professional content related to one’s work, why not spread said content to a relevant network in that same field?

Creating the button and incorporating it into one’s own site is dead simple for developers, who can use this page to select one of three styles for the button (pictured) and then copy and paste the provided code into the HTML for one’s own site.

Some websites already employing the new LinkedIn share button are Bloomberg Businessweek, The Huffington Post, CNNMoney.com and Reuters.