Does it make sense to put a "Send it to a friend" button on a webpage? [closed]

Question

How often do we see stuff like "Send this page to a friend" on a webpages? Well, I see them quite often.

My question is, how do you guys see it's effectiveness? If I hit a webpage that's interesting, and I think my friend would enjoy it, I can just copy the URL from my browser bar, paste it into the email and press "Send" button. In my opinion, it's usually faster and less mistake-aware then the button/link like this on the webpage. In addition, I'm not really sure what this website does with the emails I enter there - don't they store it and then sell for $1/100 addresses to spammers?

My question is - when you design a website, do you put such links on the pages (it's often seen on sites with some news/articles)? Does it even make sense?

Answer 1

My mom has no idea how to send a URL in email or IM, but she does use "send it to a freind" buttons quite often.