Facebook’s “Like” button recently celebrated its first birthday—noting that 10,000 sites are integrating with the social plugin on a daily basis. A week ago, the evolution of sharing widgets continued with the launch of the “Send” button. “Send” won’t replace its comrade, “Like,” but will appear next to it as a new option to share content with a more specific subset of people.

JESS3 wanted to mark the occasion of the Send button joining Facebook’s widget arsenal by creating an infographic on how far the social network has come since unveiling Facebook Connect in 2008 (click to enlarge).

On the latest evolution of Facebook widgets, Facebook platform product manager Austin Haugen said, “Since we first launched the ‘Like’ button, it’s been a great tool for broadcasting, but it never nailed the use case to share something relevant to certain people.”

Similar to “Like,” the “Send” button is simple and streamlined. To share a page or article with “Send,” just click and a pop-up appears allowing users to select individual Facebook friends, Groups and email addresses to share along with a short message.

Facebook kicked things off with “Send” on over 50 sites including The Washington Post, last.fm, 1-800 Flowers, Gilt Groupe, The Huffington Post and Orbitz. If the success of “Like” is any indicator, “Send” will replace the classic “email a friend” button soon.

“Send” is the logical next step for Facebook’s quest to integrate email messaging into its overall sharing strategy with the eventual speculated goal of reinventing email itself.

Geosocial sites like Foursquare and Gowalla need to take a page from the big boys and use this type of sharing integration to become more user-friendly on their own platforms; failing to do so will decrease their relevancy.

Geosocial could even take “Send” type functionality up a notch and get ahead of the game by integrating it with texting. Imagine checking in at a party and being able to simultaneously direct message, email and text specific contacts?

Taking the “Send” button’s functionality to the next level by integrating a texting function would allow these smaller platforms to stand out in the crowd and compete on a larger level. If they don’t adapt, they will be left behind.

Tags: facebook, facebook connect, facebook social widgets timeline, foursquare, geosocial, gowalla, infographics, like button, send button, social plugins, widgets