Have you ever wanted to share a set of memories with some of your Twitter friends, keeping the content private while still allowing for collaboration between certain folks? It's not anything we thought we wanted, either, but after playing with TwitAlbums , we find the concept charming. Here's how it works: Using Twitter's OAuth function, users log in and create collections or "albums" containing multimedia content and text comments. They can invite whatever users they like to join them in adding files, and only the users they invite can see the content or comments. Best of all it looks like this little app already has a monetization strategy in place. Sponsor The concept is inherently charming. Users create an album with a single click. They can then proceed to upload movies, pictures and audio files. We'd like to see options for adding more file types, such as web pages, text files and more. Users can then choose others to collaborate with them on the album. A tweet is sent inviting the collaborators to the album, and they are prompted to sign in via OAuth when they click the tweet in the link. This immediate request for account access without an explanation of the app might be a bit disconcerting for some, however. If an uninvited Twitter user clicks the link, they are given an "invite only" notice and denied access to the content. Collaborators can add content, leave comments and invite other users, depending on the permissions set by the original album creator. Finally, it's interesting to note that the app's creators have built in a mechanism for modest financial returns. Each uploaded file costs the user a single onsite credit, called a TwitSeed. Accounts come with 50 TwitSeeds, and more can be purchased in bundles of 100 for $1, 500 for $4, or 1000 for $8. One thing we don't like is that the app pushes a ton of link- and hashtag-studded notifications into the user's Twitter stream. As with other apps that gain access via OAuth, from the infamous Spymaster to the successful TinyChat , this is a very fine line that most users would appreciate the app not cross. Generally speaking, users won't have a problem with a single tweet or two, but a constant stream of app-related messages when the user is active on the site can only end badly. Worst of all, we don't see a way to opt out of these notifications, so we've had to delete these tweets manually, which does nothing to mitigate the swarm of updates for our friends using Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck. Particularly since the content is set up to be private, it doesn't make sense to broadcast tweets about each user's on-site activity. We think this app would work well for younger users, social media addicts and long-distance friends, especially if the above-mentioned issues are addressed. What do you folks think so far; does TwitAlbums have what it takes to become a widely used Twitter application? Would you use it, and what would you use it for? Let us know in the comments. Discuss
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TwitAlbums: Private, Collaborative Content Sharing Via Twitter
Copia , a new e-book platform, plans to take on the big players in the market by launching its own e-book store and a set of touchscreen e-readers. Copia also wants to combine numerous social networking features with its e-book platform and plans to sell its services to original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Copia's e-book store will offer over 250,000 books from over 1,500 publishers , as well as 1,400 newspapers and over 750,000 free books from Google Books. Sponsor Copia's private, limited-invitation beta will launch this month. The company plans to expand this beta in March. Copia bills itself as a hybrid solution, as the company plans to offer both consumer-facing e-book solutions as well as an open platform for OEMs. Focus on Social Networking Features On the consumer side, Copia wants to differentiate itself from its competition by giving its users a number of social networking tools. Community profiles on Copia, for example, are linked to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, the service will offer collaboration tools that are mostly geared towards students. Users can highlight and annotate books, for example, and share these annotations with other users. Copia will also implement a rating system for book reviews. OEM's will be able to offer all of these features to their users as well. OEMs will also be able to integrate Copia's e-book store into their own devices. Copia's E-Readers: Ocean and Tidal Copia plans to offer six different e-readers with prices ranging from $199 to $299. The Tidal will offer a six-inch ePaper display and the Ocean will come in a basic six-inch version and two advanced versions with a nine-inch screens. Both of these models will come in three different variations. The most basic models will not offer any wireless connectivity besides Wi-Fi and won't offer a touchscreen. The intermediate models offer touchscreens, and the high-end versions will offer touchscreens and 3G connectivity. All models come with tilt sensors and 4GB of internal memory. These devices will go on sale on Copia's site in April. Can This Work? We still have a lot of questions about Copia. We don't know at what price the company plans to sell books and what DRM-solution Copia plans to implement. At the same time, though, the company's plan to sell both e-books and compatible e-readers looks a lot like Amazon's strategy and there can be no doubt that Amazon has been quite successful with this model. Copia, however, doesn't have any name recognition yet and the e-book market is currently dominated by big companies like Amazon, B&N and Sony. If Copia is successful in getting enough OEM partners, though, it could establish itself as another major player in the market. The company's e-reader lineup also looks like a potential winner. Discuss
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Copia Challenges Amazon, B&N and Sony: Unveils New E-Book Platform and 6 E-Readers
If all your interests and skills were reduced to a scannable set of tags and thumbnails, what would your ego look like? That's the question startup YouTego attempts to answer with their web-based app that asks users to spend a few minutes in navel-gazing self-definition to create a snappy page of terms and related images. It's simple, social and actually quite fun once you get the hang of it. Sponsor The thing that impressed us about YouTego is that it's part of a growing trend of simple self-tagging systems such as Glue that allow users to claim mastery of or affinity for concepts, objects, groups, places, and people. With relatively little "profile" information, users are able to identify themselves within the context of the universe around them. In YouTego, the UI isn't quite as intuitive yet, but the results are pretty slick. Users have the option of telling the app a little bit about themselves, then they can identify "tegos" (tags for the ego, according to the site) to show what they can do, where they work, where they go/went to school, what they love and more. For the visual component, the user is asked to select a thumbnail for each tego. These images are found through a lightbox-type feature in the app and can come from any number of sources, including Google search or a specific Flickr account. Once tegos are created and elaborated upon through expressions and impressions, the user can be matched to others on YouTego or other users' content, can "star" other users' tegos and can add TegoMates or friends. It would be cool to see the service integrated with Facebook and Twitter, which it doesn't appear to do currently. And the app is very young and has its bugs. For example, it doesn't play well with Chrome at all. Still, it's gathering a lot of good data about related tags, tags related to images and how people connect over expressions of their own personalities. Discuss
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YouTego: An Addictive App for Self-Visualization
At this year's LeWeb conference, Pearltrees will launch the beta version of it's bookmarking and curation service. In this beta, Pearltrees will introduce some interesting features for Twitter users. Starting Wednesday, Pearltrees users will be able to connect their Twitter accounts to the service. Pearltrees will continuously scan your Twitter account and index every link you share on Twitter. Currently, shared links on Twitter are often quickly forgotten, but thanks to the new Pearltrees connection, you will be able to easily create an archive of all the links you have shared with your friends. Sponsor We got a chance to discuss Pearltrees and its upcoming launch with the company's CEO Patrice Lamothe in the startup's Paris offices today. According to Lamothe, the average Pearltrees user already spends about 12 minutes per day on the site. According to Lamothe, the company's mission it to give users the option to curate anything on the Web and make it easy to archive all the links and content you share online. You can find our in-depth review of PearlTrees here . Thanks to the new Twitter feature, which will put all of the links you share on Twitter into a drop box on Pearltrees, you can now easily create a complete archive of all the content you share. You still have to organize this content yourself, however. Pearltrees does not feature auto-tagging. Also Coming This Week: Real-Time Updates Starting on Wednesday, Pearltrees will not just allow you to import links from Twitter, but the service will also be able to send out alerts to your Twitter friends when you update your own pearls. In addition, the company will also introduce a new search feature and updates from other users you follow will be updated in real time. It's important to note that Pearltrees' focus is less on following other users. Instead, Lamothe stressed, the real value of the service is in following the content that others users create on the service. API Coming Soon Early next year, the company will introduce an API that will allow developers to access bookmarks and import and export data from other services. The details of this API are still in flux, but will likely allow developers to easily connect other social networks to the service as well. Discuss
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Pearltrees Beta Launches on Wednesday: Will Let You Archive the Links You Share on Twitter
After a predefined period designed to increase transparency and maximize user feedback, Facebook has announced that, with fewer than 7,000 user comments, it will proceed to implement its proposed amended privacy policy . With adequate user information, Facebook hoped to become better stewards of "the unnaturally uncontrollable nature of communication," as we called their general user-data privacy dilemma in June. And this revision also makes a nod to Canadian objections to Facebook's policies. What's in store for users, and how did the thousands of units of user data impact Facebook's governance and privacy policy? Read on to get the full story. Sponsor The latest revision of the policy can be found here , and the current policy is available here . According to the site's governance, fewer than seven thousand user comments, the revised policy will be shortly enacted and will be official. "While a lot of people participated," wrote IP counsel Michael Richter, "the total number of people commenting did not reach the threshold of 7,000 that makes a vote necessary according to our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Because of this - and the fact that many of the comments were positive - we've decided to adopt the revised policy." The new method of determining policies based on user feedback stems from the site's desire to foster a culture of transparency and engagement. Here are the old policy and revised policy changes, which, again, will be enacted shortly: Old: When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information... Even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content... Access and control over most personal information on Facebook is readily available through the profile editing tools. Facebook users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account. Information will be updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their Facebook account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook. New: Viewing and editing your profile. You may change or delete your profile information at any time by going to your profile page and clicking "Edit My Profile." Information will be updated immediately. While you cannot delete your date of birth, you can use the setting on the info tab of your profile information page to hide all or part of it from other users... Deactivating or deleting your account. If you want to stop using your account you may deactivate it or delete it. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.) in case you later decide to reactivate your account. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and in doing so are asking us to maintain their information until they return to Facebook. You will still have the ability to reactivate your account and restore your profile in its entirety. When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted. You should only delete your account if you are certain you never want to reactivate it. You may deactivate your account on your account settings page or delete your account on this help page. Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users. However, your name will no longer be associated with that information on Facebook. (For example, if you post something to another user's profile, and then you delete your account, that post may remain, but be attributed to an "Anonymous Facebook User.") Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested. Future updates will be announced via the site's governance page . Discuss
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Facebook Adopts New Privacy Policy
