Social plugins are tools that other websites can use to provide people with personalized and social experiences. When you interact with social plugins, you share your experiences off Facebook with your friends and others on Facebook.

The main social plugins include:

• Like button: Click Like to share and connect with things from other websites that you find interesting
• Share button: Click Share to write something about a link and then post it to your Timeline
• Embedded posts: Add any public post from Facebook to your blog or website
• Comments box: Publicly comment on another website using your Facebook account

If you're a developer, learn more about implementing these features within a single line of HTML.

While social plugins appear on other websites, the information appearing in them comes directly from Facebook, so they're just an extension of your Facebook experience. Plugins were designed so that the website you're visiting receives none of this info.

You only see a personalized experience with your friends if you're logged into your Facebook account. If you're not already logged in, you'll be prompted to log into Facebook before you can use a plugin on another site.

At a technical level, social plugins work when external websites put an iframe from Facebook on their sites, as if they were agreeing to give Facebook some real estate on their websites. When you visit one of these sites, the Facebook iframe can recognize if you're logged into Facebook. If you're logged in, it’ll show personalized content within the plugin as if you were on Facebook directly. Even though the iframe isn't on Facebook, it's designed with all the privacy protections as if it were.

Learn more about the Like button you see on other websites and how social plugins let you take your friends with you around the web.

Any website can use social plugins. Learn more about adding social plugins to your website.