A share icon is a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

intended to convey to the user a button for performing a share action. Content platforms such as YouTube often include a share icon so that users can forward the content onto

social media platforms Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include: * Online ...

or embed videos into their

websites A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education ...

, thus increasing its view count.

Share Icon

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

developer Alex King created the original Share Icon in 2006. ShareThis acquired the rights to this icon a year later, and eventually licensed it under four licenses: the

share-alike Share-alike is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copyleft li ...

GPL and

LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

, and the

permissive Permissiveness may refer to: * Permissiveness (endocrinology), between hormones and cells. * Permissiveness (virology), between viruses and cells. Permissive may refer to: * Permissive society, a liberalization of social norms in a society. * ...

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

and Creative Commons Attribution 2.5. ShareThis produces widgets for accessing

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

services from a single pop-up menu. This icon is trademarked and was cause for controversy due to it being subject to legal take-down notices despite its license.

Open share icon

The Open Share Icon (or Shareaholic icon) is designed to help users easily identify shareable content. The icon aims to convey the act of sharing visually by representing one hand passing an object to another hand, while also representing an eye meaning "look at this." The icon was designed by the company Shareaholic, and made available under a

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

license, with the restriction that "clear attribution and a hyperlink back to this page in a prominent location". The Open Share Icon is supported by Ken Rossi (creator of the widely used OPML icons) and Bruce McKenzie (GeoTag icons), and is used by hundreds of websites and applications, including

SmugMug SmugMug is a paid image sharing, image hosting service, and online video platform on which users can upload photos and videos. The company also facilitates the sale of digital and print media for amateur and professional photographers. In 2018, ...

, the Shareaholic Firefox addon,

Wikia Fandom (formerly known as Wikicities and Wikia) is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics (i.e., video games, TV series, movies, entertainers, etc.). The Privately held company, privately held for-profit Delaware ...

, NetworkWorld, Weather Underground, Princeton University. It is also proposed for use in the Mozilla Add-ons Directory.

Rightward arrow icon

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

uses a share icon showing an arrow pointing up and then right. The "share" button on Facebook covers several ways of sending the content with optional privacy settings to others. The "shares" button can generate more non-fans, and can result in fewer fans on a public Facebook page as a “brake effect of viral reach". The algorithmic content ranking on Facebook might decrease the fan reach in response to the notable increase in nonfan reach. Therefore, the "share" button may have a higher impact on content ranking than the previous "page like" button.

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

uses a similar icon.

Upward arrow icon

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

's products use an icon showing a box with an upward arrow.{{cite web , url=https://www.apple.com/iwork/iwork-dot-com/news/2010/04/using-iworkcom-on-your-ipad-1.html , title=iWork – iWork.com News – Using iWork.com On Your iPad , publisher=Apple , date=April 30, 2010 , accessdate=August 29, 2012 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20111006172557/http://www.apple.com/iwork/iwork-dot-com/news/2010/04/using-iworkcom-on-your-ipad-1.html , archivedate=October 6, 2011 , df=mdy-all This icon is used on several Apple products: * In

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

iWork iWork is an office suite of applications created by Apple Inc., Apple for its macOS, iPadOS, and iOS operating systems, and also available cross-platform through the iCloud website. iWork includes the presentation program, presentation applicat ...

, for sharing work on iWork.com. * In Mobile Safari, to show a menu of options: "Add Bookmark," "Add to Home Screen," "Mail Link to this Page," and "Print." * In QuickTime X, to show the

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

MobileMe MobileMe (branded iTools between 2000 and 2002; .Mac until 2008) is a discontinued subscription business model, subscription-based collection of online services and software offered by Apple Inc. All services were gradually transitioned to and e ...

Gallery,

, and trim options

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

shows a similar icon next to each tweet. This opens a menu with three options: Send via Direct Message, Add Tweet to Bookmarks, or Copy link to Tweet.

References

Graphical user interface elements Computer icons Social information processing

Share Icon

Open share icon

Rightward arrow icon

Upward arrow icon

See also

References