After watching friends and relatives struggle to navigate the complications of photo sharing using Facebook, Apple’s Photo Streams and Google’s social network, Google+, I’m here to help. In this column, I’ve organized tips and tricks that might surprise even the most share-happy shutterbugs, and will serve as a helpful guide for people who want to feel more in control and comfortable while sharing photos. While there are numerous alternative methods for photo sharing, including thousands of apps, I zeroed in on Facebook, Photo Streams and Google+.

People can share albums from Google+ with anyone, including people who don’t use the network, by generating a link that can be sent to others.

Sharing With Friends Who Don’t Use the Network

Here’s an all-too-familiar scenario: You spend hours uploading, editing, captioning and “tagging” (identifying people by name) photos to create an album on Facebook, only to be asked by the one person who doesn’t use it if she can see the album. If you’re like most people, you say you’ll send the photos along, eventually. Then you change the subject to something more pleasant, like the cavity you recently had filled.

Unbeknownst to many users, Facebook, Google and Apple enable sharing with people who don’t use their services. Not surprisingly, these out-of-network sharing options are buried in an effort to force people into using the services. So where are they?

In Facebook, after creating an album, open the page that shows the album’s title and contents, select the small gear icon to the right of the album title and click “Share Album.” A Web link to the album will appear that you can copy and send to anyone, even if they don’t use Facebook or aren’t one of your Facebook Friends.

Facebook’s iOS and Android apps enable uploading multiple photos to existing albums, using the icon, above, or new albums.

Any Apple device running the company’s newest operating system, iOS 6, can create and view Shared Photo Streams. These are collections of photos on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that you can share with friends via email. If your friends also use iOS devices, they can use them to view the Shared Photo Stream.

People who want to see these photos but don’t have an Apple device can still do so, as long as the album creator moves a slider labeled “Public Website” to the “on” position. This public album link is included in an email invitation, but it’s easily overlooked because it appears below a much larger blue button labeled “View this Photo Stream,” which only works on iOS devices. Be sure to click on the text at the very bottom of the email invitation that says, “You can also view this photo stream on the web.”

When people use Google+ to share photos, they’re immediately encouraged to click once and share to “Circles,” which are select groups of people within Google+. But they can also share with friends outside the network by adding their email addresses into the line that says, “Add names, Circles, or email addresses.” This enables sharing with friends who don’t use Google+ or don’t have Gmail accounts.

A Shared Photo Stream as seen through a public album link.

Entire albums can be shared outside of Google+: Within Albums, select one and click the “More” drop-down menu to find “Share album via link.”

Sync Mobile Photos as You Go

Facebook, iCloud and Google+ allow people to wirelessly synchronize their mobile photos with their accounts, saving them privately until they’re ready to be shared.

To set this up on Facebook, you can use the mobile app or the website. From the app, select Photos on the left-side panel, then Sync at the bottom right of the screen. Tap the gear in the top right to set whether your phone will sync over Wi-Fi or cellular or just over Wi-Fi. From Facebook.com, open your Timeline, select Photos, “Synced From Phone” at the top, then follow instructions to share images. People can sync up to two gigabytes of images.

Anyone who buys an Apple or Android device is prompted during setup to turn on Photo Stream or Instant Upload, as the companies call their respective offerings. Shared Photo Streams don’t count against your overall iCloud storage, nor do they work against your count of photos in Photo Stream, which syncs the last 1,000 images across your iOS devices. Google+ stores its synchronized mobile photos under a section called Instant Upload; these remain private until shared with others. Google+ has an overall limit of 5 gigabytes, but standard-sized photos like those captured on smartphones don’t count against this limit.

Other Helpful Tips

Facebook Camera is the free app that first made it possible for people to upload multiple photos to Facebook via iOS. Now, the main Facebook app also enables uploading multiple photos on Android or iOS, and images can be added to new or existing albums by selecting New or tapping a small album icon. Facebook also makes it simpler to post several photos at once in a status update using your Web browser: Users can now click a small “+” icon that appears beside uploaded photos to add more. Also, it’s now possible to drag and drop images right into the status box for sharing with Facebook friends.

If you’re ready to share your Apple Photo Stream with a broader network of friends, these can be uploaded to Twitter or Facebook, but the steps are practically hidden from view. Do this by opening Photo Stream and clicking the small, blue arrow to the right of the Stream you want to share. Make sure it has a link associated with it by switching the Public Website slider to “on,” then hit “Share Link” and select your preferred social network destination. Apple’s own message system, iMessage, is also a sharing option here.

Photo sharing should be more intuitive, and Facebook, Apple and Google are obviously still figuring out the best ways to pack multiple features into their websites and mobile apps. With any luck, your friends and family will have an easier time viewing your photos than you did sharing them.

Email Katie.Boehret@wsj.com

For my immediate public thoughts, I use Twitter. I’m speaking to my followers in the moment, addressing the global town square.

For personal, perhaps off-color remarks, I’ll go to Path. I’m only friends with a handful of people on there, most of whom get my sense of humor.

And then there’s Facebook, where I go to recount certain personal experiences — but not all of them — to my friends, mostly those people I know in real life.

Which is part of why on Wednesday, Facebook will begin to introduce a set of small but significant privacy changes across the site, a part of a broader industry-wide battle for user attention and sharing.

This is Facebook’s persistent problem, it’s Achilles’ heel. It is not the social network to end all social networks. It, along with the others, is compartmentalized, relegated to a specific type of sharing for specific people. And it kills Facebook that this is the case.

The crux of this problem isn’t that Facebook can’t fulfill sharing across all these different contexts. It’s because users aren’t able to control what they’re sharing easily enough, and more importantly with whom they’re sharing it.

“We fundamentally believe that when users are suprised, it’s bad for them, and ultimately bad for us,” said Sam Lessin, director of products, identity and Timeline at Facebook. “It’s denigrating on trust.”

In other words, the fewer “Oh God, what embarrassing photo did I just share?” moments we all have, the better.

Some of these updates attack this type of problem directly. Facebook will add a small “privacy shortcuts” tab to the top right-hand corner of your page. It’s a toolbar that lets you manage who can see what you’re posting and who can contact you, along with a link to a full sub-directory of privacy settings. It’s faster access to features that were already there — just buried beneath a host of other menus.

Other updates are smaller in scope, yet tackle the broader issue of sharing transparency. Now, Facebook will pop up two permissions requests when you connect third-party apps — a “read” permissions box, which lets the app access your Facebook data, and a “write” box, which lets you choose whether you’ll let the app publish activity to your Timeline. Before, those two options were collapsed into one pop-up, potentially leading to some user confusion.

Notes will appear to users who hide posts from their timelines, explaining where else on the site these items may appear. A new takedown request tool lets you ask friends to remove posts and photos that you may have been tagged in.

And then there’s the update that will bring some hand-wringing. Facebook is eliminating the option that allows users to choose who can look up their timeline across the site, effectively letting anyone on Facebook find your front page through a name search.

Some people may immediately shout “privacy invasion!” here. And perhaps it is Facebook casting aside some veil of user obscurity. But that’s missing the point.

Yes, your timeline will be searchable. But Facebook has made it clear it wants to be the definitive online identity site — not LinkedIn, not Google, not Twitter. And for a directory of identities to truly work, everyone must have a listing. Your timeline is your listing.

But Facebook’s rationale here is this: A listing is only as public-facing as the information it displays. If you can better control what shows up in the listing, it won’t matter as much that this listing is there in the first place. And again, better control will cut down on the “surprise” issues Facebook wants to avoid.

And this, my friends, is the point. If we can feel at ease and in control of what we’re sharing and with whom, there’s less need for the Paths, the Google+’s, even the Twitters of the world.

“Facebook isn’t just for friends,” Lessin said. “Yes, that’s the center of the graph — but we’ve spent a lot of time developing other audiences.”

Expect to see the changes appear before the end of the year. You can’t miss ‘em. Facebook will plaster site-wide banners at the top of the News Feed informing everyone about the new features.

Just like Facebook said: No surprises is a good thing.

With its new Android-based Galaxy Camera, Samsung is gambling that Web-crazed consumers will want to take on these commitments for the chance to share photos whenever they want.

The idea of marrying a Google Android mobile operating system with a digital camera is not entirely new. Nikon has done it, Polaroid plans to do it, and now Samsung has introduced this camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera has some distinct advantages over its main competitor, the $300 Nikon Coolpix S800c. It has better hardware and is running the newest Android OS, Jelly Bean. And the Nikon is Wi-Fi-only. While testing it (here’s my review of that camera), I wasn’t able to share many photos on the spot. Most times, I’d wait until I was back home or at a hotel before I would share the photos via Gmail, or to Instagram or Facebook.



While testing the Galaxy, I’ve been able to share my photos at any time — even when I didn’t have access to Wi-Fi. And the camera shares photos quickly when it connects to AT&T’s 4G network (which is HSPA+, not LTE).   



But there are three key things to consider with this camera. For one, it’s relatively big. Another detractor is price: It sells for $499.99, although AT&T is currently offering the camera for $399.99 if you also buy any Samsung Galaxy smartphone — yes, a second device — with a two-year contract.



If you want the constant connectivity, you’ll have to sign up for an AT&T data plan, or add another line to your existing AT&T plan. You can pay an additional $10 a month on top of your AT&T mobile plan to share between one gigabyte and 20GB of data, or you can opt in to a separate “data connect” plan that can range from $15 to $50 to share between 250 megabytes and 5GB of data.

And in case you’re wondering: The camera does not act as a phone.

There’s also a plan activation fee of $35.

 So, unless you’re already an AT&T customer on a mobile share plan, you can expect to pay at least a $15 monthly fee to use this camera, plus a fee just to get it connected. While consumers are pretty accustomed to these costs when it comes to smartphones, they’re new to cameras. 


Some consumers might even wonder why they’d need such a high-priced Android camera when some newer smartphones, like the iPhone 5, the HTC Evo 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, have pretty good eight-megapixel cameras.



With all that said, if you’re still interested in buying the Galaxy Camera — it’s an impressive camera, one that does take better photos than a lot of smartphone cameras.



It measures 5.07 x 2.79 x .75 of an inch, and weighs 11 ounces. Its all-white body has a curve on the right side that’s covered with etched plastic for a better grip, and it feels solid.



It’s also chunky, due in part to the large lens pocket on the front of the camera. It felt heavy in my purse and in my coat pocket. It didn’t fit in some smaller clutch purses, and it definitely wasn’t fitting in the pocket of my jeans. Samsung explains it size by saying that the camera basically crams two high-end gadgets into one. 



The Galaxy Camera has a powerful, quad-core processor, a large 16-megapixel image sensor and a 23-millimeter wide-angle lens. It has an attractive, 4.8-inch HD touchscreen display. On the top, there’s a dial for controlling the 21x zoom — which also doubles as a volume control button. Otherwise, there are no dials on the camera, keeping it refreshingly simple. 




Its home screen looks just like the home screen of an Android smartphone — including icons for apps like email, Google Maps, a Web browser and the Google Play store. I was able to easily download apps for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When you tap the camera icon, you can opt to shoot pictures in Auto mode, Smart mode or Expert mode, the latter of which offers some manual settings (like ISO, shutter speed or aperture priority). Auto mode includes a variety of fun photo filters. There’s also a one-tap video-recording button for capturing HD video.

In most situations, excluding some low-light settings or scenes with a lot of movement, the camera took amazingly crisp and vibrant photos. 

And the option to share those photos right away was admittedly pretty convenient.

When I was out in Boston one night, I was able to take a good picture in the dark of the exterior of Fenway Park, and quickly post it online for my boss (who happens to be a rabid Red Sox fan). Over Thanksgiving dinner, I took pictures of a couple and their dog for a potential Christmas-card cover, and sent them the ones they liked on the spot. I shared photos via Instagram.

A photo taken with the Samsung Galaxy Camera



I also used the camera to check email, browse Twitter and navigate an unfamiliar area using Google Maps. 

It was almost enough to make me ditch my smartphone some nights — except, of course, I couldn’t receive or send text messages or make phone calls with the camera. So I still carried around both devices, and mainly pulled the camera out when I wanted to capture a really good-quality photo. 


In my experience, battery life on the Galaxy Camera wasn’t great. I had to charge it once every couple days, and I was using it intermittently. Samsung doesn’t have an official claim for battery life. The battery life of standard point-and-shoots is usually measured by how many shots you can take per charge. When you add a full mobile OS to the camera and allow for apps and Web browsing, it gets a bit tricky.



Fortunately, as with Android smartphones, you can see which apps are running in the background, or put the camera into either “Airplane” or “smart network” mode to conserve power. 


The Samsung Galaxy Camera is the best Android-based camera that’s currently available, but consumers should weigh the cost commitment that comes with being always connected.

Yahoo and Facebook are not currently in talks about forming a search alliance or building a search engine together, according to my sources, who scoffed about such a deal reported in a thinner-than-tissue-paper post by the Telegraph earlier today.

In addition, Yahoo is not anywhere near ending its search partnership with Microsoft, although new CEO Marissa Mayer has been in touch with the software giant about improving performance that has been less than lackluster over the course of its history so far.

Despite this, it would be nearly impossible for Yahoo to extricate itself from the long-term contract easily — though there are certain, but very difficult, outs. But sources tell me Microsoft would fight any attempt to end it earlier.

Thus, while Yahoo and Facebook have had a very good relationship of late, after the pair stopped warring over patents, and have also had success with its various sharing initiatives, a substantive search collaboration is not now in the mix.

Could the pair do more in terms of sharing among its users? Sure! Could they more tightly integrate services? Yep! Could they do something jointly related to advertising? Why not! But will they build a search engine together? Not likely.

Indeed, I am not even sure what such a thing means, since it would now be nearly impossible to execute, given Yahoo has outsourced its core search technology long ago to Microsoft and has been largely focused on improving search experience since then.

Of course, it’s no secret that Facebook is likely to enter the search arena in a more substantive manner in the future — CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said so publicly — because people expect a better experience and users have been asking for years for improvements.

So watch that space, for certain, as it could also be very lucrative for the company and perhaps give search leader Google a bit more of a race.

But the social networking site is likely to work on its own in such an effort — as well as approach the space in much different ways. Hooking up with Yahoo would bring it almost nothing it might need to make it a success.

There are some interesting what-ifs to ponder with the idea of Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo forming some kind of Avengers-style effort to battle Google, especially if it had a mobile element. But that’s the movie version at this moment.

(Speaking of movies, I am sorry it took me so long to get to this, but I was seeing the final “Twilight” with some All Things Digital staffers. I can report that the sparkly vampires of the film are also not in search alliance talks with Facebook.)

One unusual phrase in the Telegraph article did catch my eye though, which noted that “board members expect the talks to lead to much more substantial collaboration based around Web-based search.”

Such a Facebook search tie-up rumor would certainly do wonders for a Yahoo stock pop tomorrow for all the hedge funds now piling into the Silicon Valley Internet giant, would that it were so.

But it’s not.

Adam Cahan

A very important management shift at Yahoo got a bit lost in last week’s news of CEO Marissa Mayer’s first acquisition, a small mobile start-up called Stamped.

That would be the appointment of former IntoNow founder and CEO Adam Cahan to oversee all of Yahoo’s mobile efforts, as well as its Flickr photo sharing service.

According to an internal memo that Mayer sent out last week to employees, Cahan has been given the title of SVP of Emerging Products and Technology, with a spot on the exec staff, reporting directly to her.

Said the memo (in its entirety below):

“[Cahan] will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.”

Mayer’s promotion of the slick exec, who has been described by almost everyone I spoke to at Yahoo as smoothly political, is an interesting internal choice by Mayer. He only got to Yahoo recently, after IntoNow was bought by Yahoo for more than $20 million in the spring of last year.

IntoNow was a spinoff from the video advertising company Auditude, which was sold to Adobe for a reported $100 million.

The television indexing start-up had launched in early 2011 as an Apple iPhone app that recognized what was playing on the screen by analyzing the audio from satellite feeds and matching it to listings. The start-up had hoped to eventually license its technology as offer-measurement services for TV advertising and viewership.

As Liz Gannes noted in a post on AllThingsD:

“It’s similar to the Shazam mobile app that many people know and love, which IDs an ambient song by recording it and quickly matching it to an archive. IntoNow users can “check in” to a particular episode once it’s been recognized, like one would check into a restaurant on Foursquare. The goal is to enable conversations around the watercooler and on social networks by helping users connect around what they’re watching and discover new things to watch.”

Cool, although IntoNow’s technology was far more compelling than its consumer promise.

Now, Cahan will be charged with doing both of Yahoo in mobile — which is most likely to be accomplished via a series of small mobile acquisitions, presumably to be stitched together into a cohesive and successful whole.

At least that’s the idea.

Cahan is an experienced exec, having worked at a number of places before founding IntoNow, including MTV Networks, NBC, McKinsey, National Geographic Television and — wait for it — Google, in business operations.

(Being an ex-Googler, which Mayer is, seems to have its advantages at Yahoo these days, with Cahan as the latest example.)

He is most definitely a key hire, because Mayer spent a lot of time stressing how mobile was Yahoo’s No. 1 priority on its recent earnings call with investors.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said, noting a “focused, coherent” mobile strategy was the top initiative.

Mayer had to say that, of course, even if being a mobile giant is now mostly just wishful thinking at Yahoo, since most of the many efforts the company has made in the arena have been duds. Yahoo has also lost a lot of mobile engineering talent over the years, remaining largely a desktop offering, even as the area has increasingly become where consumers are getting their information.

A blog post by Cahan at Yahoo was widely quoted when the tiny Stamped — which is an online recommendations app — was bought for under $10 million last week by Yahoo.

In it, he noted:

“Most people are always within arm’s reach of their mobile phones. For many of us, it’s the first thing we look at in the morning and the last thing we check at night. Mobile is at the center of how we connect with people, consume information, and pass the time, and we’re focused on making Yahoo! the most inspiring and entertaining way to do just that.”

We’ll see if Yahoo can be a significant mobile player, as Mayer has promised Wall Street. But Cahan has certainly been busy since he got the job, sources said, beginning with the rejiggering of Yahoo’s mobile teams, as well as visiting the Flickr office this week.

Until it all sorts itself out, please enjoy this Oct. 25 internal memo on Cahan and the Stamped acquisition:

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Hi All –

As we discussed in our strategy all-hands earlier this month, innovation and talent are essential to delivering against our vision to inspire and delight our users as a part of their daily lives. Many of the areas that require special attention are emerging technologies and Yahoo! products where we’ve not yet reinvented, re-imagined and rebuilt in order to keep pace with changes in user behaviors and platform shifts.

To aid our efforts, I’m promoting Adam Cahan to lead this effort as Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. Adam will be a member of e-staff and report directly to me. He will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.

And he’s already making great progress! Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired a very talented mobile team, based in New York City.

Robby, Kevin, Bart, Paul and the entire team at Stamped are a natural fit for Yahoo!. Their experience building fun, useful, personalized mobile products aligns well with our vision to create the best everyday mobile experience for our users. The team will be a great asset for us as we expand Yahoo!’s mobile efforts and create another key center for mobile innovation in New York.

I’m excited that we’ve been able to move quickly and execute well in order to bring on such a talented team. Please join me in congratulating Adam in his promotion and welcoming Anthony, Bart, Geoff, Kevin, Landon, Michael, Paul, Robby and Travis to Yahoo!

Thanks,

Marissa

Over the summer, Google announced that it, too, was jumping into the digital invitation space with the addition of Events to its Google+ social network. Google+ Events offers handsome stationery with picturesque still and animated images. It also has a cool way of integrating with Android phones: A Party Mode lets guests share all the photos they take during the party with other guests.

But some people may not be ready to use social networks for event invitations. Facebook Events can only be sent to other Facebook users, and while Google+ Events can be sent to anyone via email, they only offer non-Google+ users a passive view of the event page. Events in social networks make people nervous they’ll accidentally broadcast their agendas to 400 “friends” by responding to an invitation or get caught lying about their whereabouts. And hosts may worry their event might not stand out in a busy social network.

For the past week, I’ve planned events in Google+ Events and Facebook Events to see what each offers in the way of privacy, host privileges, photo-uploading capabilities and ease of use. I’ve asked friends for feedback and it turns out most people aren’t completely sure of the privacy settings in either network.

The biggest challenge I faced with Google+ Events is that hardly any of my friends use Google’s social network on a regular basis, if at all, and several of them had trouble responding to my event. And these are tech-savvy people who regularly use other social networks. Another point of confusion: Google+ has a feature that lets a reply to an email containing something shared from the network instantly appear in Google+. This also applies to events, so when two of my friends hit “reply” to my event’s email invitation, their responses appeared on the wall of the Google+ Event page, for all invitees to see. But they weren’t counted as attending if they hadn’t opened the invitation and selected “Yes,” “Maybe” or “No.”

Though both Facebook and Google+ offer the option to make your event public (think school bake sale), they also offer varying degrees of privacy. Facebook Events can be set as public or only visible to friends, those invited or specific Facebook groups. Google+ Events can be public or shared only with those who are invited, which can mean individual names of friends or entire Circles (groups) of people. Google+ also offers On Air Events, which means they are publicly viewable to anyone online who uses the network, but only invited guests can RSVP, comment and add photos.

Unlike Evite, neither Facebook Events nor Google+ Events allows a host to see when someone has viewed an event invitation; rather, the host is only notified when a guest RSVPs or adds something—like a photo or comment—on the event Web page.

Both social networks let guests post photos on the event page. If the event is public, photos will be visible to all who view it, but photos posted in private events are only visible to invitees. Hosts can delete a photo that they don’t want on an event page. On Facebook, attendees can click a gear icon in the top right corner of the page to see a drop-down menu, selecting Add Event Photo. In Google+ Events, people can tap Add Photo in the top right of the page.

With the Google+ Events Party Mode, which only works on smartphones that run Google’s Android operating system, guests can upload photos to the event page as they take them during the event. It worked as advertised, stopping right when the party ended. After an event, people can look at these photos and sort them according to who took the photos or who was tagged in photos.

Using Facebook, you can export friends’ birthdays or coming events to Apple’s iCal, Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. To export a single event, click on the gear icon at the top right corner of the event page. And a helpful new month view in Facebook Events gives people a clearer way to see coming or past events. (Find this by selecting Events in the top left corner of Facebook.com and select Calendar.)

Google+ Events are added to Google Calendar after you RSVP and appear when you hover over that day on the calendar, showing the event page image and other details.

Facebook does not send reminders to guests before the event, like Evite does, though guests can be notified when hosts post on the event wall or page. Google+ does add a reminder 24 hours before events.

These social networks can be a confusing environment for creating events and RSVP-ing to them, and Google+ Events may still be baffling to friends who don’t use it. At least for the time being, I’ll keep trying to get my friends to use Google+ Events in hopes that they catch on.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120911/e-invites-to-the-social-network-events-of-2012/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120802/revolving-door-yahoo-departures-begin-even-as-mayers-team-still-tbd/ http://allthingsd.com/20120802/revolving-door-yahoo-departures-begin-even-as-mayers-team-still-tbd/#comments Fri, 03 Aug 2012 00:09:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=237298

After former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn departed Yahoo earlier this week, I noted that it was only a matter of time before more execs headed out the door with the changeover to new leader and former Googler Marissa Mayer.

So it is written, so it shall be done, it seems, with two significant departures from the company this week — with one tech exec going to Apple and another product exec headed to an interesting new online education initiative.

According to several sources, Adam Bechtel — who has been the VP of infrastructure at Yahoo — will be leaving for an unspecified job at Apple.

At Yahoo, Bechtel was essentially the No. 2 exec under tech, platform and ops head David Dibble, and had purview over its data centers, network, systems, storage and edge technologies. He joined Yahoo almost a decade ago, via its acquisition of Inktomi.

Also out the Yahoo door is Jonathan Katzman, a product ace who was part of the social efforts across Yahoo, led by Mike Kerns. He was on the Kerns team that drove its most notably successful product in a while, Social Bar, which has become one of the most popular apps for sharing on Facebook.

Katzman came to Yahoo after its acquired Xoopit — an email-focused sharing product — in 2009. He’s headed to be chief product officer at the Minerva Project, which is attempting to build the next top-tier university online.

There have been many other departures of less-well-known execs at Yahoo, several sources said, mostly due to fatigue over the number of management changes at the company. Most recently, that includes sales exec Marc Grabowski, who left without other plans.

“It’s not Mayer’s fault, but some of us are just done,” said one person who is leaving. “A lot of us just can’t take another restructuring.”

That said, a large number of others who had been contemplating leaving Yahoo are now in a wait-and-see mode regarding what their new CEO will do and who she will pick to help her turn it around.

Among current top execs, that has prompted who-will-stay-and-who-will-go guessing games internally, with Mayer grilling staff up and down the organization to get a better lay of the rocky land.

Perhaps the most insecure in their status are the top employees on the media and sales side of Yahoo, who were aligned with Levinsohn and his vision of the company as a content-centric business. Those to watch include strategy exec Jim Heckman, sales head Michael Barrett, and media head Mickie Rosen, among others.

Also, intriguingly still in the mix: Former Americas ad sales head Rich Riley, who is apparently still with the company, despite a June declaration to move on after some months. (Things change fast at Yahoo!)

On the tech and product side, it will be interesting to see if Mayer will promote from within its ranks — such as elevating Shashi Seth, SVP of Yahoo’s connections business. Other execs who could move in this arena are Dibble, and also Mark Morrissey, who now works for Dibble as head of engineering operations.

Of course, there are the other parts of Yahoo that Mayer also now has responsibility for, such as legal, marketing, finance and HR. The execs to monitor there include CFO Tim Morse, HR head David Windley, and marketing chief Mollie Spilman.

Longtime Yahoo legal head Mike Callahan left the company before Mayer’s arrival, so that job has been given to Ron Bell — Hi there, Ron, be nice! — on an interim basis. But look for movement there too.

Much speculation is also centering on what tech stars Mayer might bring in from Google or from elsewhere, including via acquisition.

She’ll need a lot of firepower, of course, to turn the company around, and has told various execs that she expects to make a lot of talent hires to get Yahoo back to producing at more innovative levels.

As I reported earlier today, she has got one already — former Google PR exec Anne Espiritu is now moving over to corporate communications at Yahoo. At the same time, Mayer abruptly let Yahoo’s most recent PR spokeswoman, Dana Lengeek, go.

Expect Mayer to continue to pull from Google, which is chock-full of talent and where she had a coterie of favorites, some of whom are there and some of whom have moved on. Those mentioned as possible hires still at Google include shopping exec Samir Samat and social-networking-famous (and fantastic) Orkut Büyükkökten.

But many of Mayer’s close colleagues have left Google already and are ensconced in important jobs, including: Dylan Casey, who is now director of product management at Path; PR exec Gabe Stricker, who runs communications for Twitter; Craig Silverstein, now at the Khan Academy; and Ben Ling, who is currently COO of the Badoo “meeting network.”

Mayer also reportedly holds former Googler, FriendFeeder and Facebooker Bret Taylor in very high regard. But the entrepreneur — exactly the kind of tech powerhouse she needs to bring into Yahoo and soon — is now in the midst of creating a new start-up.

When I pinged Taylor today about whether he’d consider taking up a challenge such as Yahoo, he texted back:

“No, definitely still starting my own company, despite the fact that I am a big fan of Marissa.”

It’s a nice compliment, and Mayer’s got a lot of people rooting for her, of course — the real trick will be to turn some of the strongest ones into Yahoos.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120802/revolving-door-yahoo-departures-begin-even-as-mayers-team-still-tbd/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120801/studyhall-offers-new-site-for-collaborative-course-work-and-books/ http://allthingsd.com/20120801/studyhall-offers-new-site-for-collaborative-course-work-and-books/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:03:35 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=236452 A new course management site, StudyHall, is looking to take current standard Blackboard to school.

But StudyHall, which launches today, is taking a populist approach with its system: Students only, no professors allowed.

StudyHall users can create Facebook-like profiles with pictures of themselves and a list of groups and interests. The site, which is free to join, suggests potential buddies both on campus and at other schools that students might want to link up with.

Unlike Facebook, StudyHall’s goal is to focus less on social and more on academics, with digital notebooks indicating which courses users are taking and which books they’re using.

There’s a designated Notes section, in which users can post their class notes and control who they’d like to share them with; and, naturally, users can schedule a Study Hall — a collaborative online work session.

StudyHall is the brainchild of entrepreneurs Ben Winter and Ross Blankenship, who have received around $500,000 in early funding from a group of undisclosed investors.

Winter and Blankenship envision StudyHall becoming a peer-to-peer book-selling market as well, with StudyHall getting a small percentage of each transaction made.

While StudyHall has officially launched, it’s currently not available to any and all college students. Winter and Blankenship have been trying to get the word out through campus officials and orientation leaders, and say they hope to roll the site out by mid-September to five (elite) schools: Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Middlebury and Cornell.

It’s hardly the first company to try to offer an alternative to Blackboard. And it could face some interesting hurdles as it looks to grow.

Blackboard first launched in 1997, and for the past decade or so has been the leading Web site for students and teachers to access coursework and share notes. Its legacy product, Blackboard Learn, is currently used by more than 3,200 colleges and universities across the U.S., the company says, and has a large international footprint, as well.

After Blackboard went private last year, it began to focus on growth through acquisition — most recently by buying Moodlerooms — and has made some inroads in the K-12 market.

Blackboard also introduced mobile apps across all platforms, seeing that more and more students were using iPads and smartphones as study tools.

An example of a StudyHall profile.

StudyHall currently doesn’t have any mobile apps to offer, but says both iOS and Android apps are in the works.

More importantly, Blackboard is set up through client agreements with institutions, which then make Blackboard available to professors and students at the course level. Basically, where Blackboard is available, it’s got the administrative seal of approval, whereas StudyHall is looking to eschew the administrative process by making the site a destination for students only.

“We want StudyHall to be a place where students can post, ‘Hey, did you understand what the professor was saying today?’ or ‘Did anyone take good notes? I was hungover and missed class,’ without repercussion,” Winter said in an interview.

Winter and Blankenship concede that a legitimate concern is StudyHall becoming a forum for cheating, and that some administrators they’ve met with bristle at the words “collaborative” and “student-only” for that reason.

“We’re going to be very proactive removing content that’s flagged as fraudulent, and if a school reached out to us looking for a digital footprint of a student accused of cheating, we would, in a controlled manner, help them with that issue,” Winter said.

He also pointed out that the academic property of universities — which includes syllabi — can’t be uploaded to StudyHall, and that such restrictions will be clearly marked to students.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120801/studyhall-offers-new-site-for-collaborative-course-work-and-books/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20120725/paths-latest-refresh-is-all-about-growth-and-engagement/ http://allthingsd.com/20120725/paths-latest-refresh-is-all-about-growth-and-engagement/#comments Thu, 26 Jul 2012 04:00:56 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=234005 As the self-proclaimed “personal network,” Path is in something of a difficult position. Unlike a Facebook or a Twitter, the network limits its own viral growth, as it is private by design. You’re held to a maximum of 150 friends. If you’re not in someone’s network, you can’t see any of their activity or details. Inviting others is possible, though not a prominent feature.

Consider Path 2.5, the start-up’s largest version update since Path 2.0 launched last November, the company’s move into giving the private network a higher profile. Launched Thursday morning, the version refresh adds a slew of new features aimed at making the network accessible to those not already using it, lessening the learning curve for newcomers and improving existing features for its current users.

Take, for example, the attention paid to updating interactions and invites. If you want to connect with someone who isn’t on Path, you can send him or her a personalized invite via email or SMS, complete with your own recorded voice message. For those already in Path, you can broaden their network by suggesting new friends to your existing ones.

As the product has evolved over the past year, Path CEO Dave Morin told me in an interview, there have been a number of different use cases: Exclusively family-oriented, family and friends, and then the uber privacy conscious. Path’s job, Morin said, is to follow those different use cases and reach the different demographics through new iterations of the product, like the one we’re seeing in this latest release.

But he is quick to assure that in following the growth, Path is sticking to its original — private — guns: “Our values are to speak to this sort of intimacy,” Morin said. “And we never compromise our values.”

New initiates aren’t left in the dark. The update also brings what Morin calls an “unboxing experience,” essentially a guided tour of how to use the app upon first downloading it. It’s hand-holding to the extreme, in line with the company’s “personal” philosophy.

The other major part of the update fights against another challenge inherent in a closed network: Engagement. Sharing inside of Path means using Path’s set of tools, but many users may find they already rely on other sharing apps. For example: While you may already use Instagram for photos, Foursquare for check-ins and Evernote for note-taking, Path has its own camera, check-in and note-taking features that you have to use in order to feed its network. If users are already hooked into using other apps, that means duplicating the action to share it inside of Path.

That’s why those tools are improving over time. Photos will display in full-bleed in the stream (akin to a recent Facebook product update), and the camera tool has more filters, faster photo-capture accessibility and an actual cropping function. And in addition to sharing what music you’re listening to, you can post what you’re reading or what movie you’re watching. Google loyalists may also rejoice; Path’s Android app has been rebuilt from the ground up, optimized and better-designed after Google’s recent release of the Android Design style guide.

Of course, tools are only good if they’re used, and Path obviously won’t thrive if there’s no activity within the network. That’s where the new “nudge” feature comes into play. If you’ve noticed that a friend hasn’t posted any updates within the app for some time, you can “nudge” them, or request that they create a specific moment — be it a new photo, a location check-in or a comment. Nudges beget user activity, and that activity feeds on itself.

All of this is not to say that Path’s is a dead network. Quite the contrary, according to Morin: Over the past two weeks, Path has seen more organic growth than in the entire history of the product — even more than when the app relaunched with version 2.0. He didn’t give me any specific numbers, but assures that growth is massive.

Still, despite this growth, Path can’t rest on its laurels. It has the unique problem that only closed networks like itself and Nextdoor must face: How do you toe the line of pushing forward and accelerating growth while touting privacy as your flagship feature?

The answer, it seems, is simple: Empower the user, and let them do the work for you.

“It’s always been an evangelistic sort of product,” Morin said. “So we need to put those tools into the hands of people who want to evangelize.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120725/paths-latest-refresh-is-all-about-growth-and-engagement/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120706/exclusive-yahoo-and-facebook-strike-patent-peace-deal-expand-ad-and-content-partnership/ http://allthingsd.com/20120706/exclusive-yahoo-and-facebook-strike-patent-peace-deal-expand-ad-and-content-partnership/#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:07:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=227773

Executives at Yahoo and Facebook have completed an extensive strategic deal, as part of a final settlement of their contentious patent infringement lawsuit and countersuit.

According to sources close to the situation, the agreement will include a major expansion of their ongoing partnership, including a joint advertising sales effort, as well as cross-licensing of some key patents between the pair.

The deal has gotten approval from the companies’ boards — in fact, Yahoo’s directors agreed to it this morning in a telephonic meeting. It will be announced sometime later today.

No actual cash payment will change hands under terms of the deal over the patents, in contrast to the $550 million that Facebook paid Microsoft recently in another transaction related to AOL patents.

But sources said Facebook and Yahoo hope there will be significant upside in several possible advertising and other business deals between the pair that could yield large revenues if executed well.

In addition, there is a possibility that Facebook could later pay to license other Yahoo patents not included in this deal.

Discussions to settle the lawsuits — negotiated by Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, among others — began almost as soon as Yahoo’s board ousted former CEO Scott Thompson, which I reported on in early June and Yahoo officially confirmed several weeks later in a regulatory filing.

The lawsuit was initially waged by Thompson, who reportedly promised directors that a big financial payoff of many billions of dollars could result from the patent lawsuits against Facebook.

At the time, despite strong support by its legal execs, many other Yahoo managers — including those who had crafted an earlier and successful content- and data-sharing agreement with Facebook — were blindsided by the aggressive move by Thompson. That included Levinsohn — who was then in charge of its global media unit — and other top execs.

So, after Thompson was gone and with board support, Levinsohn immediately reached out to Sandberg. In addition, Yahoo’s point person on the deal, VP of strategy James Heckman, met with a number of top Facebook execs including: Dan Rose, VP of business development and monetization; VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson; and business development director Chris Daniels.

Such an outreach was a major shift for Yahoo, but was possible due to a newly configured board in the wake of the Thompson departure.

Still, some directors who had pushed for the initial lawsuit that Yahoo unexpectedly lobbed against the social networking powerhouse in March have remained on the board and agreed to the latest settlement.

The reason for the change of heart? While many still felt Yahoo had a strong case, backed by important intellectual property in a range of key digital arenas, Facebook was prepping for a long and expensive battle by girding its patent defenses.

Thus, the possible end of the rancorous legal battle should be greeted with enthusiasm by Wall Street investors, as well as many detractors of Yahoo’s legal action across the tech landscape.

And, indeed, the company’s reputation definitely suffered as a result of the lawsuit, with many techies, both inside and outside the company, decrying Yahoo’s lawsuit.

Many of those engineers, as well as entrepreneurs — key constituencies for Yahoo’s revival — firmly believe a patent portfolio should only be used defensively.

Now, if the deal is approved, the move will have been turned a decidedly negative situation into a potentially stronger partnership.

Among the most notable parts of the deal is an arrangement to jointly sell big events and other packages to advertisers.

In addition, as it has in content, Facebook will allow Yahoo to be the first partner to feature information about its users’ “Likes” in actual display advertising on Yahoo.

Extending and adding to such contact-sharing was apparently one bone of contention in the talks to settle the lawsuits, although there had already been an element of that in a previous partnership between the pair. Yahoo is one of the few Facebook partners with access to information from its social graph; Facebook, in turn, gets user contact data from Yahoo.

Of course, how well the pair works together to deliver better experiences for its consumers and marketing for its advertisers remains to be seen.

But it’s clear that any rocky road in cooperation is much better than the legal quagmire both had been stuck in.

One thing is likely — the successful end to the tensions ups Levinsohn’s chances of getting the permanent CEO job. Directors have not given him the nod as yet, with another candidate — Hulu CEO Jason Kilar — as Levinsohn’s leading rival for the job, as I first reported yesterday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120706/exclusive-yahoo-and-facebook-strike-patent-peace-deal-expand-ad-and-content-partnership/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120703/eye-fi-looks-toward-new-photo-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20120703/eye-fi-looks-toward-new-photo-app/#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:21:29 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=226726 Eye-Fi, maker of SD memory cards that bring Wi-Fi to non-connected devices, is working to develop a more powerful photo storage and sharing app.

In an interview with AllThingsD following last week’s CE Week program, Eye-Fi CEO Yuval Koren said that the new app would be “platform-agnostic,” expanding beyond the devices it currently supports.

The company is aiming to ready the app for the second half of the year, though it declined to comment on exactly when the app would launch.

Eye-Fi already has a software app for desktops and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Last year, the SD card maker introduced Eye-Fi Direct, for easier photo transfers, via Wi-Fi, across devices.

Eye-Fi also works with several photo storage and sharing sites, including Flickr, Picasa, Snapfish, Shutterfly, SmugMug and more, so it will be interesting to see whether Eye-Fi’s new offering enhances that sharing or more directly competes with those Web sites.

The plans for the new app arrive as Eye-Fi anxiously awaits final word from the SD Association — which represents more than a thousand companies that set industry standards — on the approval of a set of new SD card standards that could adversely impact Eye-Fi. Eye-Fi has said that this new set of proposed standards violates the company’s intellectual property.

The SD Association’s IP review process was set to wrap up earlier this year, but Kevin Schader, the SD Association’s director of communications, says the organization is still continuing the review, despite Koren’s assertions that the review has been completed.

In the meantime, Eye-Fi has paid to become an executive member of the SDA, in order to gain some voting rights in the ratification process.

And as we reported earlier: The flap is coming at a time when consumers are increasingly using their smartphones for photo-taking and sharing — and more electronics makers are introducing cameras that have Wi-Fi capabilities, cloud services and apps for sharing built directly into the cameras.

Koren says Eye-Fi’s biggest concern isn’t the camera makers adding Wi-Fi capabilities to devices; it’s the potential for other memory card makers to mimic their technology without licensing it.

Eye-Fi currently licenses its tech to SanDisk, the world’s largest provider of flash memory. But there’s certainly room for other electronics makers to get in on the game. By creating new software, Eye-Fi hopes to set itself apart from the competition.

Koren envisions a cloud-based app that updates consumers’ photos across all devices as the photos are being moved or edited.

He also wants photo sharing to be file-format free. For example, the app would recognize and display the file type that’s optimal for whichever device the consumer is using. It might show a high-res photo on a new Retina display iPad, but a smaller, low-res file on a less powerful device.

“Photos aren’t a ‘jpeg file’ — they’re photos,” Koren said. “I don’t want consumers to have to interact with files, I want them to leverage the capabilities of the devices.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120703/eye-fi-looks-toward-new-photo-app/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120628/googles-social-trojan-horse-google-events/ http://allthingsd.com/20120628/googles-social-trojan-horse-google-events/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:03:12 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=225825

AllThingsD.com

Since its inception one year ago today, the most familiar critique of Google+ has been Google’s sign-up strategy. As users face prompts from many of Google’s popular existing properties to upgrade their accounts to include Google+ profiles, it has felt like more of a strong-arm approach than a welcome invitation.

There’s a better, more personal approach. And Google may have just found it.

First unveiled at the I/O developer conference on Wednesday, the Events feature allows Google+ users to send out customized invitations to their friends both on and off the Google+ platform. It’s helpful in that it’ll auto-update invitees’ Google Calendars if they accept, and acts as a single repository for event photos; essentially, everyone at the event can take photos and automatically send them to the same place.

On its own, it doesn’t seem like the kind of feature that would make one rush out to use Google+. But here’s the thing: If Google can convince even a small number of existing Google+ users to start sending out event invites, the network could wind up getting a whole bunch of new users.

Example: I’m not on Google+, but I receive an invite to a wedding from a friend who is part of the network. If I click through the email to the invitation, I’m greeted with a big, Google-branded prompt to join Google+. So in essence, it acts as a direct mail solicitation service, powered by a group of people who are much more convincing than Google: Your friends and family.

The tough part from there? Convincing everyone to stick around. Sign-ups exploded when Google+ first debuted, but the main takeaway afterward was that the whole platform became a ghost town — plenty of houses, but no one at home.

It’s possible that Google plans to fight attrition with more real-time feature integration. Hangouts — the on-air group video chat service — has been the service’s most compelling draw to date, offering a far better feature set than Facebook’s one-to-one Skype integration. And the “Party mode” part of Events allows everyone in attendance to instantly upload pictures to the same album using the Google+ mobile app, creating a living, real-time photo journal of a specific time and place.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee anyone will use the service, though it’s off to a promising start: More than 1,000 people used Party mode at Google’s official I/O shindig on Wednesday evening, contributing upward of 13,000 photographs over the course of the night.

Now that’s a party. We’ll see who sticks around to clean up after.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120628/googles-social-trojan-horse-google-events/feed/ 11 http://allthingsd.com/20120604/mobile-social-video-apps-what-you-need-to-know/ http://allthingsd.com/20120604/mobile-social-video-apps-what-you-need-to-know/#comments Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:25:43 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=215932 Uploading video to YouTube or Facebook from your phone can be tedious. Thankfully, some apps aid this process, allowing you to capture video clips, add special effects and easily share them with your social networks.

But unbeknownst to their users, some of these apps have a bad habit of sharing app activity and video-viewing activity with others.

Last week, I tested three of these smartphone video apps: Socialcam, Viddy and Mobli.

I found that shooting videos using Socialcam is easy and fast, but when you watch videos, the app shares what you’re doing unless you know to turn off those functions. Viddy works similarly, though the app has a 15-second limit on the length of the video you share. Mobli’s interface was a bit more confusing, and the app is really geared toward following celebrities and discovering videos made by people you don’t know.

Here’s a breakdown of how these three apps work:

Socialcam

Socialcam is a free app, available for iPhone and Android. I tested it on my iPhone.

You can sign up for Socialcam through Facebook, Twitter or an email account. After I signed in through Facebook Connect, Socialcam said it would be sharing the videos that I watched, and I had the option to select “yes” or “no.” I opted for “yes,” to get a sense of the full sharing features of the app, though I later had some trouble turning this feature off.

There are nine filters that can be applied to your video before you begin shooting — so you don’t have to wait for the effects to render afterward. There are also some options to add text, and 11 soundtrack options.

It took somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds to process each of my short video clips, including the time it took to apply video filters. From there, I could post my video to a blogging Web site, such as Posterous, DropBox, Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook. I could also email the video, or send it via text message.

If you click on a Facebook friend’s Socialcam video post and you’ve authenticated through Facebook, your video-watching activity will appear in your feed. Socialcam says it doesn’t post your video-watching activity until you’ve watched between seven and 10 seconds of a video, but many users don’t know to change their social sharing settings within that time. On the top bar of the Web page there’s a tab for turning social mode on and off; more social settings appear underneath the actual video player.

Socialcam recently had to fix a bug related to those “sharing” settings. I experienced this with the old version of the app: I tried to turn off my social-sharing options at some point, because I realized that my Facebook friends could see what I was watching, but with each new session my social sharing would default to “on” again. When I re-downloaded the app, the issue seemed to be resolved.

Viddy

Viddy is an iPhone-only app, geared toward sharing 15-second snippets of video.

When I first downloaded Viddy onto my iPhone, I was prompted to sign in through Facebook Connect, Twitter or my email address. The app also asked to use my location, and it immediately asked whether I wanted to add Viddy activity to my Facebook Timeline, with a button leading me to “Settings” so I could adjust privacy settings.

I found and followed several Facebook and Twitter friends through the Viddy app, but my feed was still populated with videos from celebrities and brands, like Katie Couric and comedian Dane Cook. Unless I’m a huge fan of a celebrity, I’d much rather see videos from my actual friends.

Producing videos with Viddy was the most intuitive experience of all three of the apps I tried. I could choose a thumbnail for my video, apply one of 17 video effects and add one of 18 music tracks. The short video clips were accessible about a minute after I applied effects to them — from there, I could share them via email, text message, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.

If a Facebook friend wanted to watch the video I shared, he or she would be prompted to sign in through Facebook Connect in order to watch the Viddy video. However, a friend watched my Viddy video as a “guest” of Viddy, without logging in, and her actions were still logged on her Facebook activity feed.

In my experience with Viddy, my social-sharing settings remained off once I adjusted them. These settings can be found in the upper-right section of the Viddy Web page; in the mobile app, you have to go to your own profile first, then look for the settings button in the upper-right corner.

Mobli

Mobli is a free photo and video app available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

I used Mobli on my iPhone, connected through Facebook Connect and posted a couple of fun videos from our just-concluded D10 conference. I had the option to apply one of eight filters, which are somewhat hidden behind a small “Fx” button in the lower right-hand portion of the app’s interface.

After creating a video, I could share it to Facebook, Twitter, or via email or SMS. Friends who clicked on my Mobli links on Facebook or Twitter informed me that they couldn’t watch my video without first logging into Mobli.

That didn’t stop my videos from being viewed, however. Mobli videos are distributed to different feeds, called “Channels,” within the app, in order to generate feedback. Within a couple days of posting my first video, it had been viewed 326 times by other Mobli users, with several “likes” and comments from people I didn’t know.

Mobli has multiple feeds and really highlights celebrity accounts; finding actual friends to follow was difficult. According to Mobli’s creator, in recent days the app has been suffering from a technical glitch that prevents you from following your Facebook or Twitter friends.

This meant that I was only seeing the feeds of famous people, or people I didn’t know at all. I like Leonardo DiCaprio, but there were only so many clips and photos of “The Great Gatsby” that I wanted to see.

The videos I watched on Mobli appeared in my Facebook feed by default. I had to go into the privacy settings in the app and uncheck a few items to make my viewing habits private.

Another drawback of Mobli is there is currently no way to block any other user from following you, though the company says it’s working on that.

All three of these apps are good for punching up, producing and easily sharing smartphone video clips, but the privacy-concerned consumer will want to take a hard look before using these — or before connecting them through various social networking services.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120604/mobile-social-video-apps-what-you-need-to-know/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120515/google-says-forced-sharing-is-a-bug-not-a-feature/ http://allthingsd.com/20120515/google-says-forced-sharing-is-a-bug-not-a-feature/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 18:38:50 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=208486 Google is offering publishers a new tool that lets them force users to “share” a story before they read it themselves.

That can’t be right, can it?

Not exactly. That scenario is what Gawker’s Scott Kidder encountered when he read a story on Adweek’s site today, but that’s not what’s supposed to happen.

Instead, Kidder should have had a choice of filling out a one- or two-question survey or sharing the story on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Bug, not a feature, says a Google spokesrep, via email:

Generally, Google Consumer Surveys are designed to show a market research question along with an alternate, publisher defined action, such as signing in or sharing a piece of content. Along with the surveys, we also offer a number of controls to prevent abuse of the system. Unfortunately, in rare cases, as a result of these controls, a prompt runs without a survey question included. This is not the intended behavior and we are currently working on a fix.

[UPDATE: This is now fixed, a Google rep says.]

Okay, fair enough. As far as the survey that AdWeek users are supposed to see, which acts as an ersatz pay wall by generating a small fee for AdWeek and Google every time someone fills it out: Annoying and a little clumsy, but not terrible.

I’ve read about the tool, and I’ve used it several times, but each time I encounter it I think something’s broken on the site. Then I remember what’s happening, make a couple of clicks without giving it a lick of thought — today’s survey was about professional medical supplies, I think, but I really have no idea — and move on.

Hard to see how this is useful for the survey sponsor, but I’ve always found online sponsor polls to be baffling. So perhaps it’s a less-bad option.

In any case, it’s a couple of clicks, so I’d prefer that to having Adweek crap up their site with slideshows, or forcing me to make lots of clicks to read a one-page story, which happens all over the Web these days. I also prefer it to Facebook’s “frictionless sharing” via “social readers,” which end up automatically belching up my friends’ reading habits into my feed, whether or not either of us wanted that to happen.

And in the big picture, unless the site you like is using the “borrow money from investors, pay back by selling to Facebook” plan, you’re always going to end up paying something to use it.

Either you pull out your credit card, or you lend them your eyeballs so they can rent them out to advertisers. And if you don’t like those options, you’re going to end up with a much emptier Web.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120515/google-says-forced-sharing-is-a-bug-not-a-feature/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120514/apple-preparing-upgrade-to-icloud/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/apple-preparing-upgrade-to-icloud/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 17:20:40 +0000 Jessica E. Vascellaro http://allthingsd.com/?p=207768 Apple Inc. is preparing an upgrade of its online service iCloud that includes new photo-sharing features, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/apple-preparing-upgrade-to-icloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120508/the-race-build-the-instagram-of-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120508/the-race-build-the-instagram-of-video/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 16:44:33 +0000 Jessica E. Vascellaro and Spencer E. Ante http://allthingsd.com/?p=205333 Facebook Inc.’s $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing start-up Instagram has shifted the spotlight to the newest phenomena in mobile apps: uploading personal videos from smartphones.

A growing number of start-ups are providing easy ways to share videos taken from a smartphone, enabling people to add music and text and to share the results on Facebook or another social network.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120508/the-race-build-the-instagram-of-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120418/viral-video-bubblicious-its-the-ultimate-silicon-valley-bubble/ http://allthingsd.com/20120418/viral-video-bubblicious-its-the-ultimate-silicon-valley-bubble/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:13:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=197638

Here’s a video of an interview I did last week with CNN, on whether there was a bubble in valuations of start-ups in Silicon Valley.

Of course, the report was prompted by the mobile photo-sharing phenom Instagram’s recent sale to social networking giant Facebook for $1 billion.

My conclusion: It’s not a bubble exactly, but it is bubble-ish.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120418/viral-video-bubblicious-its-the-ultimate-silicon-valley-bubble/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120409/facetagram-instabook-whatever-you-call-it-all-your-photo-are-belong-to-facebook-for-1-billion/ http://allthingsd.com/20120409/facetagram-instabook-whatever-you-call-it-all-your-photo-are-belong-to-facebook-for-1-billion/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:20:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=194502

If you want a quick analysis of why Facebook would pay $1 billion for popular photo-sharing service Instagram, please ignore the obvious financials that just don’t add up at all and have most of the typically unshockable digerati shocked by the sheer amount of the price.

Actually, it’s pretty simple: Photos. Photos. And, oh yes, mobile photos — lots and lots and lots of them.

Astonishingly, Facebook users already upload an average of more than 250 million images daily, making it the most popular photo-sharing service on the Web.

But it’s not the best by far and not the most mobile, which is Facebook’s biggest weakness — that has been accomplished many others, especially Instagram, the favorite of power users who scoffed at Facebook’s weak tools. (The horror of no filters!)

Now — instead of all those billions of juicy digital photos snapped by an ever-growing legion of smartphone users loading up to the beautifully designed Instagram mobile app and living on the servers of the small San Francisco-based start-up — Facebook has now captured all these memories for its massive social networking site.

And while $1 billion seems an awful lot to pay for that privilege — Twitter is quaking with “OMG!” and “Wow!” and “WTF!” tweets about the acquisition — this is apparently priceless for Facebook in a deal that went down quickly and quietly in recent weeks.

That and the fact that the huge sum prevented Instagram from being scooped up by Google.

It’s a clear signal from CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — who rules all product efforts at the company — of his intent to dominate all innovations that have to do with owning the social experience.

Because while many Instagram photos quickly made their way onto Facebook — sharing on the service, as well as on Twitter, was a big part of the app’s offering — the future of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is tied to having control over key elements of the user experience.

Of all of those — communications, status updates, content linking — it has been photos that have become perhaps the most important part of Facebook, almost since its beginnings.

Photos are what allowed Facebook to grow so quickly and what made it more than just a blue sea of text and links to consumers. Its new Timeline depends on big, pretty photos, and Facebook even recently announced that it would allow full-screen viewing of high-resolution photos on its Web site, a pricey endeavor.

So, perhaps it was inevitable that Zuckerberg would pay up for Instagram, too — he knows a good entrepreneurial success when he sees one and apparently has the power to convince start-ups that he can make their bigger dreams come true.

Whether or not Instagram ever makes money is perhaps beside the point at this moment in time, as Facebook is poised to go public at 100 times the amount it forked over for Instagram.

But that it considers such a purchase worth as much as one percent of its expected valuation says a thousands words. And most of those words are “mobile” and “photo.”

As Ben Jacobs noted on Twitter: “Kodak goes bankrupt and Instagram is worth a billion dollars. 2012, y’all.”

Indeed. And, I have no doubt if Zuckerberg could figure out a way to shove all those Kodak moments from analog snapshots onto Facebook easily, he’d have paid up for that, too.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120409/facetagram-instabook-whatever-you-call-it-all-your-photo-are-belong-to-facebook-for-1-billion/feed/ 0