Facebook Share Link With Original Text

Since May, Facebook has been rolling out 'New Facebook', a massive redesign of its desktop experience (with the old design now named 'Classic Facebook'). It has a new dark mode, bigger type and more space to breathe. But the changes aren't purely aesthetic - there are also some changes to functionality which may not be immediately apparent.

One such change relates to sharing a post from one page that you manage to another that you also manage. Admittedly not everyone will be managing multiple Facebook pages. But if, for example, you are a publisher with several brands in the same sector, this could be a common scenario.

Classic Facebook...

Here you can see what happens in Classic Facebook when you 'Share to a Page' (to do this, click Share under the post and then Share to a Page). Note the original post consisted of a link to an article ('How to view your Nintendo Switch Wish List online'), plus some message text above this ("Not what I normally write about..."):

When I share this to another page, by default it only shares the article - but I can also tick 'Include Original Post' to include the message text as well. At this stage I can also add some new message text of my own in the 'Say something about this...' field (this appears on the shared version only, not the original obviously).

What's the point? Well, the option to 'Include Original Post' is great for setting up micro-dialogues between pages. Perhaps page 1 has a particular take on a current news story, but page 2 disagrees with this. Perhaps page 1 makes a joke, and page 2 runs with it - and so on. It's a good way of cross-promoting pages while highlighting any similarities or differences in editorial opinion.

I know what you're thinking - this all sounds very contrived. But it doesn't have to be: the two pages could well be managed by different editorial or marketing staff members at the same company, who are spontaneously interacting with each other.

...Versus New Facebook

Now took a look at what happens in New Facebook when you 'Share to a Page' with the very same post:

The option to 'Include Original Post' has disappeared! It is only possible to share the article, but not the message text that was posted alongside it. This reduces the opportunity for dialogue between two pages in the same stable.

For the time being, it is still possible to switch between New Facebook and Classic Facebook (click on the Account arrow in the top right and you'll see the option in the drop-down menu). So if you need to 'Include Original Post', you could swap back to Classic just to do the share. But I am sure that Classic Facebook won't be available forever.

Sharing image posts

Incidentally, all of this only applies to sharing posts that include a link. Posts that include an image always include the message text, on both Classic Facebook and New Facebook. Here's what that looks like on New Facebook (I had to zoom out a little to capture all the different elements of this without Facebook introducing a scroll bar):