Facebook Groups get Dropbox integration for more flexible file sharing

Facebook and Dropbox today announce the integration of the cloud storage service to allow users to easily share Dropbox files with people in their Facebook Groups.

Now when users select “Add File” from the Groups publisher, they will have an option to choose a file from Dropbox. The first time users do this, they will have to connect their Dropbox and Facebook accounts, if they have not done so already. Then, any document, photo or video file they share will show up on the group’s wall and can be viewed on a smartphone or tablet. Group members can like or comment on file posts, just as they can with other group posts. When users make edits to files they’ve shared, the group will get an update automatically.

Group members are able to see a user’s post with the link to the file but do not have access to the rest of the person’s Dropbox. Dropbox creates a unique token used only in that link, however, group members can copy the link and share the file elsewhere.

The feature helps make Facebook Groups more flexible and efficient for team collaboration as well as personal sharing. Dropbox suggests the examples of students sharing notes with their study group, a coach sharing the latest game schedule with his basketball team’s group, or someone posting a birthday video to a family group.

The social network first gave school-specific groups native file-sharing capabilities in April, and then began to roll it out to all groups in May. Natively shared documents within a group can be public or available to members-only based on the original privacy setting of the group. Public groups cannot make individual files members-only without making the entire group “closed” or “private.”

Dropbox offers users 2 GB of storage for free, with opportunities to gain more free storage by referring friends to the service. The company also offers plans starting at $9.99 a month for additional storage. The new groups integration could help raise awareness and usage of the service among Facebook users, as the prompt to upload Dropbox files will appear to everyone even if they haven’t already created an account.

TechCrunch notes that Dropbox VP of Engineering Aditya Agarwal once served as director of engineering at Facebook. The company has previously allowed users to connect with Facebook to share files with friends, but it did not have integration with groups. Dropbox has 1.3 million monthly active Facebook-connected users, according to AppData.

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Facebook unveils school-specific groups, allows file sharing among users with designated .edu email addresses

Facebook announced a new groups for schools feature that enables users with active school email addresses join online communities related to their college or university.

Groups for schools differ from Facebook’s other groups in that they can be exclusive to students and that members can share documents with each other. The company seems to position these groups as a utility for coordinating schedules, sharing lecture notes and messaging classmates. But university-specific groups might also increase engagement among college users who don’t feel comfortable using the social network the way students did before their teachers, parents and bosses joined.

Not all schools are eligible for groups yet. Users can check the groups for schools page or wait to see a message appear on the left side of their home page when the feature is available to them. Once users join their school community, they are able to create subgroups for individual classes, study groups, clubs, teams, dorms or friends. Users can join groups for multiple schools as long as they have an active email address for each. This is necessary for study abroad or transfer students.

On group pages there will be a tab for files. Users can share non-copyrighted documents and other files with members of a school group. Anyone in a school group can upload and download files within that group. When users upload a revised version of a file, the previous version of the file remains available. Users can also message any confirmed member of their school community without being friends first.

Facebook began testing school-specific groups in December 2011, among Brown and Vanderbilt students. At the time we wondered whether university groups would be a start to a broader initiative to get more people familiar with Facebook’s offerings around small-group sharing. Since then the social network has redesigned groups a few times and given events more group-like functionality.

The way groups for schools restrict access to users with a designated .edu email address is reminiscent of the way networks operated when Facebook began in 2004. File sharing is another former feature from the social network’s college-only days. Founder Mark Zuckerberg built a peer-to-peer file sharing application called Wirehog on top of the social network, but then-Facebook president Sean Parker encouraged him to shut it down to avoid copyright infringement issues. File sharing would be a useful feature for other non-school groups, but preventing illegal media sharing would certainly be difficult.

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Facebook introduces ‘listen with friends’ for real-time music sharing

Facebook today announced the “Listen With” button, which will allow users to listen to the same song simultaneously. The feature will roll out over the next few weeks, starting with Spotify, then adding other Open Graph music services.

From the chat sidebar, users can see which friends are currently listening to music. Clicking “Listen With” will open the music player and begin the song at the same point the person’s friend is now at. It also launches a new chat window so friends can comment about the songs they share. Listening to music with friends in this way will publish a News Feed story about the activity, according to Techcrunch. Facebook has never shared chat activity with a users’ friends before, but this is similar to how Google+ shares stories when users video chat with each other.

One problem with Listen With is that users will have to use the same app. If someone is using Spotify, friends can’t click to listen to the song in Rdio. According to AppData, Spotify is by far the leading Open Graph music player with 4.6 million daily active users to MOG’s 10,000 DAU and  Rdio’s 7,000 DAU. The Listen With feature is likely to only increase this disparity and make Spotify the defacto music service of Facebook.

The new feature is similar to Turntable.fm and Google+ Hangouts, which facilitate synchronous listening or viewing experiences. Turntable.fm has users choose avatars and join virtual rooms where people take turns playing DJ. The service is more about discovering music through strangers with similar tastes than sharing with friends. Google+ lets users join video chats called “Hangouts” and share YouTube videos that friends can watch at the same time.

If Listen With takes off, Facebook could add a similar option for video streaming services. We could also imagine Listen With activity becoming an option for Sponsored Stories in the future. Promoting a shared listening experience could be quite meaningful for artists.

If Facebook ever made Chat available between users and subscribers, rather than just between friends, Listen With could be an interesting way for fans and artists to interact. Turntable.fm has seen activity spike when popular artists like Diplo, Sir Mix-a-Lot and Talib Kweli joined rooms. However, since opening Chat to users with asynchronous relationships might be tricky for Facebook, celebrity partnerships could end up being Turntable.fm’s way to survive after the launch of Listen With.

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This is what is forgotten when we talk about “benefits of piracy” and “sharing culture for free”

Who pays the development costs of the first copy?

Pirate parties explainin their websites how “all benefit from sharing of culture”. I almost agree. Yes, when product is created, and if sharing costs are zero, that indeed means that the whole world can enjoy the existing culture for free. Everybody wins?

Almost. Except the chap who created the first copy. The original piece of culture.

If all games would cost zero and everybody would just use pirated copies, the situation is pretty good. There’s just one question. How do we support those who create new culture? (I’m not saying we necessarily should, but in case we wanna create new culture, who pays the price?)

Game developers blame that pirates are selfish, since pirates don’t give their money to game developers. Pirates blame game developers being selfish, since game developers want to take pirates money.

Both are correct.

And then pirates suggest alternative models, such as these:

Game developers should get money from selling mugs, t-shirts and other stuff. Like angry birds does

This is same as pirate would be saying:

“Let’s produce more plastic crap that somebody else than me should buy”. This means that we will need to start producing crap in order to make games. I find the idea of “in order for me to make games, the world must produce more t-shirts” pretty damn unmotivating. I don’t want more t-shirts and mugs. I want more money, so that I can produce more culture.

Game developers should get money from advertising

The situation is pretty same as with the previous example, but instead of developer getting the money (or mug industry), now the game advertising industry gets the money, and we want world to produce more advertising systems.

Aka, this is same as pirate would say:

“I don’t pay, but those makers of product X should pay so that I can get culture for free”

As a developer, I don’t necessarily want another middle man who would start finding advertising deals for me, taking cut from each sale. This means my funds are used to support producing advertisement systems in the world. Or, if I don’t want middlemen, I will need to spend time hunting down ad deals, which is time I could spend make games (been there, done that)

I too am selfish, like you pirates, but at least I have the guts to admit that. (I’m also pretty good at trolling sometimes).

Also, advertising model clearly isn’t what pirates want, since pirated versions often take those ads away. So, it’s slightly odd to suggest “advertising” when pirated versions lack ads in the first place, or are downloaded through sites that show ads yes – but revenues go to somebody else than the developer.

Game developers should make distribution more convenient, like pirate bay

Pirate bay gets support from ads. Google too. They are big distributors, which make it handy to get stuff for free. This is essentially as saying:

“I don’t wanna support the creators, I wanna support the distributors for showing adult, dating, casino ads, and possibly other industry ads too, which then support those industries – but I don’t wanna support the guy or company who created the first copy. As long as somebody else pays, I’m all good.”

“Game industry needs to develop better ways to distribute”

I think AppStore, Steam, Desura and others are much more convenient distribution channels already for those who are not technically advanced. I’ve tested torrent systems, but I tell you: AppStore for example is a very handy way to get stuff.

And if it’s the “distribution” or “convenience” that you are against, why don’t you do the following:

First get pirate copy of the software Send money to the developer

This way you would cut all midmen, but developer would see his money.

I know why. Because: “I don’t have money”, said the pirate and took a sip from his ale filled with grog.

If you sip grog, instead of giving that money to a developer. Then you are supporting grog sipping, not culture creation.

Equally well I can say that if I’m spending money I get from game development to grog sipping, this means I’m sipping grog in the expense of the pirates. The difference is this:

I have the guts to say this. Currently all my game dev money goes back into creating more game dev, and to support my family (and to buy Moomins toys at the expense of your – and mine – grog sipping).

You cannot have cake and eat it too
I’m not totally against piracy. I think it’s okay for example students without money or well, anyone without money to pirate games. As long as these guys then remember to support later when they are productive members of the society and can show support to the industry creators too.

The bottom line is this:

Piracy means you don’t want to give your money to the creator (nor other parties involved) Suggesting that we should produce more grog drinking mugs means creators should not get money, but grog mug makers. Developers are selfish, yes – and we have guts to admit it: we want all the money we can so that we can keep on producing culture, and to sip some grog if money is left. Pirates are selfish, but they hide behind some “all for common good by sharing culture to all (let’s forget the chap who created the piece of culture)” clause, meaning they have more money to sip grog.

All this boils down to this:

To whom we give our money, gets to decide where it goes (after governments take their cut and spend it to build roads and statues in cities). If pirates keep the money and keep pirating, they decide who gets it. They can give it to developers or to grog industry. We as developers of course want that we get the money (plus some leftover to sip grog). Pirates wanna of course keep the money, so that they have something to buy grog.

At some point developers claim that “hey, we help children by giving to charity” to which pirates respond “so do we, by not giving you the money in the first place”.

Game devs say that “if we have more money, then we have more time to make games” and pirates reply “if I have more money, then I don’t need to go to work so much so that I have more time to play games”. Whose free time is more precious?

I think ease of distribution is important, but totally forgetting the guys who created the stuff that is distributed is somewhat worrying.

I think we are all selfish, all wanna keep decision power at our hands. There are couple of pretty fair models. Kickstarter is one: there everybody gets to decide how much they spend money so that something gets produced. Of course there’s quite a long waiting time, and some stuff doesn’t get produced if there’s no money – but that’s life.

I’ve seen some honest pirates too. They say they pirate because they don’t wanna pay, period. I think there’s nothing we can do about those chaps. They’ve chosen that we creators should not get a penny, because they wanna buy bigger monitor and faster computer to play games. I think in a free society, this must be allowed. We can respond by stopping making games, so that pirate no longer has new games to play. If that’s what society wants, so be it.

But then I’ve seen these pirate parties, who claim that “all win if sharing is free”. That is simply not true. It’s the developer who is funding the development then. The first copy costs.

I’m not saying that it’s the “right way” that it’s the players responsibility to pay – I just feel it’s one of the most fair way. Those who create get money from those who consume the creation.

So, what you think.

Who should pay the first copy? Developer? Players? “Somebody else, as long as it’s not me”?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Yahoo! Brings ‘Frictionless Sharing’ to 26 More Sites

Yahoo! announced an extension to the Facebook integration it introduced in September to 26 additional sites worldwide, including Yahoo TV, Yahoo Movies and Yahoo Games.

Yahoo News has taken advantage of Facebook’s new “frictionless sharing” method that allows apps to automatically publish stories about a user’s activity to the home page Ticker and Timeline. Yahoo claims referrals from Facebook to Yahoo News have increased by 300% in three months and that the site is seeing more traffic from the 18-34 audience as a result. Adding social reading features to the company’s other online properties is likely to continue to increase traffic, but Yahoo, like others integrating Facebook Open Graph, will need to continue to make it clear to users how their activity is being shared and how they can hide certain actions.

Since launching the Yahoo News friends’ activity feature, Yahoo says more than 12 million people have opted in for the service. When users connect their Facebook accounts with the Yahoo app, any stories people read on Yahoo News will be shared with friends via the Ticker, conglomerate News Feed stories and in a box on users’ Timelines.

Some users are hesitant to have everything they read displayed to their friends. It can be frustrating then to click on a Yahoo News link that brings up a permissions dialog rather than the story. There does not seem to be a way to opt out of connecting with the app and still go on to read the article. However, once users add the app, Yahoo does a nice job of informing people how their activity is being shared and giving them an easy way to browse privately.

We have previously compared how privacy and frictionless sharing is handled by social reader apps from The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily and The Independent. Yahoo, however, is the most popular with 20 million monthly active users, according to AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook. The Washington Post Social Reader is the next most used with 4.7 million MAU.

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Milyoni’s Facebook Credits for Video Rentals App Ups Virality With Live Commenting and Scene Sharing

Facebook ecommerce developer Milyoni has added new sharing features to its Social Theater app that lets Pages rent videos to users for Facebook Credits. Social Theater, which powers rentals for Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight and the ACL music festival, now allows users to leave timed comments, share specific scenes, chat live with other viewers, Like brands mentioned in the film, and send discounts on rentals to friends. These improvements can now be seen on the Page for film The Big Lebowski, will enhance the Social Theater user experience, and could help instances of the app spread virally across Facebook, increasing sales for content owners.

Milyoni got the attention of the ecommerce and media worlds when Warner Bros first announced it would rent films from its Facebook Page using Social Theater, and would allow users to pay with Facebook Credits. While it opened a new revenue stream to video content owners, we criticized the app for lacking many of the social feature it added this week. Without these, Social Theater wasn’t taking full advantage of Facebook’s communication channels and built-in audience, hampering sales.

The ecommerce developer has since raised $3 million in Series A funding and partnered with Page management company Vitrue to help brands drive direct return on investment on their social media efforts. It’s also been tapped to power on-Facebook rentals of concerts as well as more Warner Bros films including Inception and Harry Potter. Now it is debuting Social Theater 2.0 with rentals of cult hit The Big Lebowski from the film’s Facebook Page.

Once users opt to rent the film they’re shown a landing page with Like and Send buttons for sharing the app with friends, and a Like Box so they can become a fan of the film’s Page. Users then confirm that they’ll pay 30 Facebook Credits, or $3, for 48 hours of unlimited viewing of the film. They’re giving the option to post a link to the walls of friends that lets them get a $1 discount on renting the film.

While watching the film without going into full-screen mode, they see timed comments — text tied to a certain moment in the film —  written by other viewers scroll across the screen. They can add their own comments that are also published to Facebook, though this syndication could be made more explicit to the user.

At certain moments in the film users are are shown prompts to share scenes or popular quotes from to the film to the news feed. This content can be consumed for free by friends right from the news feed, and entices them to click through and rent the film themselves. Users also prompts to Like the Pages related to the film or of brands mentioned in the film, so users get a chance to Like the Page of the film’s main character “The Dude”, and when he asks for a drink of Kahlua, users have the option to Like the alcohol brand.

On the backend, Milyoni has implemented an efficient self-serve admin system that for deployment of the app in less than 24 hours. Admins can also customize pricing, promotion, and app layout.

Social Theater 2.0 is much more engaging and viral than the first version Milyoni launched with The Dark Knight. It gives users a unique, social viewing experience in which they can easily share compelling content and discounts on rentals with friends, and subscribe to updates about the film and related Pages. These elements should allow content owners who license Social Theater to secure more rentals, and help Milyoni turn one-time renters into repeat sales across deployments of its app.

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Here’s a pretty sweet tool for sharing gaming team stuff

I’m using Dropbox for many things, and it works pretty wonders for shared collaboration if you have a small team. Especially good for artists + coders combination since others can instantly run the stuff coders do, and artists have nice way to put their stuff. (Of course keep in mind that no 3rd party system cannot be relied on, you must have your own backups and you must think twice for which purposes you want to use it)

Anyways.

It works on several platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, and Mobile)

And it works when offline.

And it’s free: 2GB free space right away.

And one gets more free space when you invite other folks, so… get Dropbox (and help get me precious +250 MB more free space if you join through this link and install it on your machine, which would be greatly appreciated thanks you very much)

P.S. In fact, if you join through my link, you might get extra +250MB space as well. (At least one guy just reported receiving this). Pretty sweet!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Facebook May Highlight App Permissions for Contact Info, Prevent Minors from Sharing

Facebook has responded to Congressman Ed Markey’s questions about its plan to allow users to grant applications access to their phone number and home addresses. The response explains that Facebook is considering answering widespread criticism of the plan by highlighting contact information requests in the permissions screen and barring apps from asking minors for this info.

On January 14th, Facebook announced in a post on its Developers Blog that it would begin allowing users to authorize applications to access their mobile phone number and home address through that standard “Requests for Permission” dialog that users see when installing apps.

Inside Facebook and others criticized the plan, saying that though it would facilitate innovation, requests for such sensitive data should be more prominent within the permissions flow. On January 18th, Facebook temporarily disabled contact info requests based on the criticism and feedback from users.

Markey and fellow Congressman Joe Barton, the Co-Chairmen of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, sent Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a set of questions on February 2nd asking why Facebook would grant access to contact information, if this would violate its own privacy policy, and how a re-deployed version of the requests would address concerns.

However, the letter’s authors seem to have been confused, asking why Facebook was giving third-parties access to user information, when it was actually permitting users to choose if they wanted to share the mobile phone number or home address the same way they can currently share their photos or email addresses.

Facebook’s response declares “This question is premised on a misunderstanding. Facebook enabled users to choose to share contact information with applications. Our Developer Policies require developers to delete a user’s data upon the user’s request.”

Since contact info requests are covered by the site’s privacy policy and fall within the permissions framework that Canada’s Privacy Commissioner deemed adequate to inform users, Facebook says there was no need to change the policy or a notify users of a change. All product changes are pre-approved for privacy policy compliance with Facebook’s Chief Privacy Counsel.

The response does agree with the Congressmen that Facebook could increase the prominence of contact info requests, and explains that the company temporarily disabled the feature pending this review. Regarding the potential changes to a re-deployed version, Facebook say “we are evaluating whether and how we can increase the visibility of applications’ requests for permission to access user contact information. We are also considering whether addition user education would be helpful.”

The Congressmen also asked whether Facebook factored in the risks to children and minors when deciding to enable the feature. Facebook responded saying children under the age of 13 are prohibited from using the site, and that it always considers the safety of minors. However, though not explicitly mentioned in the Developers Blog post about the feature being disabled, Facebook now says “we are actively considering whether to enable applications to request contact information from minors at all.”

Overall, the response shows that Facebook is willing to take extra precautions to protect users while continuing to expand their choices of what to share. The plan for action syncs with our recommendation to make sensitive  user data requests distinct from more benign requests. By bluntly refuting misinformed questions, Facebook shows that it won’t be framed as a villain while politicians seek to appear as privacy defenders.

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