First it was “Send to a Friend,” then “Share This” and countless other social widgets, and now Facebook Connect represents the most powerful way for a web site to influence sharing.

Like switching from a fishing pole to a net, Facebook Connect greatly improves the user experience by leveraging the user’s social graph. Content and tools on your site become social currency for your users to share.

As Facebook continues to grow and become homebase for all of us, the Facebook Connect widget is catapulting to the top of the page, literally, on many leading web sites.

Seen above on The Huffington Post, they even pop up a balloon to combat against users ignoring the nav,

… and here on Digg,

… the Facebook Connect call-to-action has obviously risen in priority for these sites, as they hope to gain new fans and followers by becoming integral in our day-to-day Facebook experience.

Until now, brands have only scratched the surface of the possibilities of Connect, pulling in user-generated metadata and photos in an attempt to create a “personalized” push piece in-spite of the paradigm shift of the web to a pull-driven experiences.

Until now, most sites have relegated social mechanisms to the “Share Button” in the bottom right corner of a microsite.

So, let’s be clear — we’re embracing social networks and the social web because of the value we find in interacting with others. This isn’t about another “share button.” This is about planning social integration as a critical and integral piece of the experience. This is an opportunity to change the question “how many people shared the link to our microsite” to “how do our social mechanisms and the community interactions define our the experience?”

These thriving and expanding communities are giving us a glimpse into the present – which brands will be the first to embrace the power and potential of Facebook Connect? I’ll be looking for this link widget game-changer at the top of GM Blogs, Dell Ideastorm, Nike+, and your next brand site upgrade… so, tomorrow then?