Share Facebook Give People Means Sharing Good Things

The expression "to share and share alike" is something you say when you want to remind someone, often a child, that it is good to give some of the things you have to others. When one child in a group of children has a lot of candy, he might be told by his mother or father to "share and share alike," meaning that he should give some of the candy to his friends.

Sharing is good for adults, too, of course. The verb "to share" used to be used mostly with physical things like candy, but in the past few "decades" (10 year period), it has been used for people who give others information, usually about themselves, "as in" (such as the example) "I'd like to share with you what I did on my four-week vacation in Boise." Sometimes we don't really want to hear about other people's lives, and so we'll say, jokingly, "Thanks for sharing!" This usually means "I didn't actually want to hear that - please stop!"

The Internet now uses share to mean to tell other people about a website. You can share by emailing or using one of the many social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. "To follow" normally means to go behind someone or to do what they are doing. On Twitter, it means that you will receive "tweets" (short, 140 character messages) on your Twitter account for those people you're following.

Recently, Facebook has become very popular. The verbs often used with Facebook are "to like" and "to friend." Facebook has pages for companies, websites, and groups that fans can "like." "To like" is similar "to following" someone on Twitter - you get that page's messages on your Facebook page. If you have a personal account, you can also "friend" people, meaning you can see their pages and will also get their "updates" (new messages they put on their own pages).