The term frictionless sharing refers to one’s online
activity on his or her social network and connected personal profiles
being automatically shared without having to click a button.
Anticipating a potential decline of social button usage, Facebook
launched frictionless sharing so that the volume of content on Facebook
would continue to grow at an accelerated pace. Frictionless sharing
potentially eliminates the need of social buttons as a way to share
content with social network connections. When end users approve
frictionless sharing applications, all media consumption is
automatically posted to their profiles for the world to see.
Many companies like Spotify, The Washington Post, and The Guardian
have already adopted frictionless sharing, and we can expect more
companies to do the same as people grow tired of clicking multiple
buttons to share content across their social networks. While frictionless model continues to be controversial – especially around the invasive quality of its functionality – some reports suggest
that many people have come to accept information sharing as the price
one pays to participate in social networking. However, it’s only a
matter of time before the passive sharing of content causes too many
privacy violations to be ignored – forcing more people to question the
need to “pay a price” at all.
