Found something interesting on the internet? You should be able to share it with your friends with ease. While many sharing buttons (including scripts, forms, etc.) provide emailing capability, Tell-a-Friend (TAF) was the first to provide on-page address book access from popular email services.

The address book feature is one of the key aspects of TAF, designed keeping in line with both the Publisher and the User’s best interests.

For the User

• Simplicity: Sharing has to be a simple act, a mere click on the web page that is to be shared.
• No need of remembering addresses: Most email clients and services (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) allow for auto-completion of email addresses. While this is extremely convenient it also means that the average user tends not to remember any email addresses.
• Complete privacy assured: While a user may want to use a quick address book access, they need the trust to open that confidentially. Tell-a-Friend has been certified to provide complete confidentiality and implements a completely white-listed service.
• Zero spam: A widely used service like Tell-a-Friend that guarantees that no email addresses are retained, so no misuse or spam can occur, will give users the necessary confidence.

For the Publisher

• More traffic: An access to the TAF address book means the user might end up sharing with more people than he originally intended to; and this converts into more traffic for the publisher.
• No typos: Typos and errors don’t occur. You can be sure that the email will definitely reach the right destination, since there is no chance of typing errors happening with an address book in hand.
  
• Multiple referrals: Users may find and share with more people when they view their address book.
• Stickiness: The user never leaves your page (maybe to find an address or send mail) and continues browsing your site.
  
  

In summary, Tell-a-Friend address book feature makes it convenient and comfortable for users to share more. We find that over 50% of sharing activity on Tell-a-Friend happens through the email channel (after all, everyone is on email, more than any other service or network) and use of Gmail/Yahoo/MSN/Hotmail addresses book is very high.