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Using location to help sharing require less brain power
Combined with the ability to share with individual people, Google+’s introduction of “circles” makes fine-grain sharing possible for every conceivable piece of media you could ever want to share with anyone.
But choosing who to share with takes a lot of work. First, you’ve got to decide “who cares?” Then, if you haven’t already shared with everyone, you have to scroll and click through lots of menus to select the cirlces/people to share with. It’s kind of a pain.
The anecdote
I was at a friend’s birthday party this weekend and took this photo:
It’s a pretty silly photo, and while I had a clear idea of who would also think it’s silly, this group of people wasn’t encapsulated in single Google+ circle. It would have been an annoying amount of work to momentarily extricate myself from the party and choose each person/circle to share with. Furthermore, in my continued attempt to avoid causing other people FOMS (Fear of Missing Something), the last thing I wanted to do was share the photo with “All Circles.”
The growing utility of “where”
Google has been working hard to integrate their Maps, Latitude and Places applications. Not only can you use Google Maps to “check-in” to a venue on Google Places with Google Latitude (THAT sounds confusing!), you can also get reminders to check-in when you’re at specific locations, or even be checked-in automatically.
(Google Maps, Google Places and Google Latitude are naturally intertwined since they’re all based on location. If you’re not familiar with the differences between them, here’s the basic gist:
- Google Maps shows you where stuff is and how to get there.
- Google Places is a directory of that stuff—businesses, restaurants, stores, etc.—with reviews, ratings and photos.
- Google Latitude lets you privately track your own location, share it with friends, and check-in to places.)
One solution: Their powers combined
Imagine this: when you show up at the bar for this birthday party, Google Latitude automatically checks you in (via the device in your pocket). Your friends show up, and they’re also automatically checked in. No one’s check-ins are shared with anyone else; they’re kept private and just recorded in your personal location history.
A little while later you take a photo. Your device asks if you want to share the photo with the friends who are also checked in to the bar with you. Simple, easy, quick and relevant.
Relevance through proximity
Consider the assumption being made here: when you’re checked in somewhere at the same time as your friends, you’re probably hanging out with them. The photos taken are probably relevant to what you’re doing together, so why not just share them on the fly?
This isn’t a new idea; in fact, it’s very similar to what Color is trying to do. However, Color’s approach is to make every photo taken with the app public to whoever else was there with you. This is fine since it’s known from the start that everyone can see everything, but it’s not appropriate for private events.
One issue with Facebook that Google+ strives to solve is that not all “friends” are created equal. In some cases, friending someone on Facebook is nothing more than a mutual acknowledgement of existence on Planet Earth. You’re not actually planning to hang out, and you might never see each other again. But maybe it was fun talking that one time at that party at that guy’s place, and you friended each other on Facebook to “keep in touch.” (Don’t question this logic; it happens all the time, and no one knows why.)
Google+ brings the task of explicitly organizing your friends into groups to the forefront. Yet even this is an inexact representation of real-world situations, proving to be even less useful with in-the-moment photo-sharing. What if everyone in your “Best Friends” circle wasn’t there when the photo was taken? Do you still share with that circle? Is it worth making that last person feel bad that they weren’t there? I still try to avoid FOMS, but Facebook proves that most people LOVE bragging and showing the great time you didn’t have with them.
Better use of location might help solve these problems.
Disposable cameras at weddings
Being prompted with a list of nearby “friends” (in both time and space) can be dangerous. What if you weren’t supposed to know someone was there? Google actually removed a feature that would automatically notify you when friends were nearby for this very reason.
There are lots of creative ways around this, one of which is to check into an event at a location (Gowalla lets you do this, Foursquare less explicitly so). Maybe everyone gets an invitation, and if they accept and check-in, they’re automatically added to a a guest list that pops up when you take a photo. That way, if you don’t accept the invitation, you’re not on the list, even if you’re at the venue at the same time.
It’s similar to being at a wedding with disposable cameras everywhere. Everyone shares the cameras to take photos, and then everything gets developed and shared with everyone who was there.
Gowalla and Foursquare
As mentioned, Gowalla already lets you create and check into events. From a product standpoint, Gowalla is much more focused on letting you remember and collect your experiences. They’ve fully embraced the “passport” design metaphor, and let you collect stamps for venues, states, countries etc. If you use it consistently, you’re creating a timeline of what you’ve done and where you’ve gone.
Foursquare, on the other hand, is more about sharing where you are with friends. It’s designed to maximize FOMS.
Neither of these applications offers automatic check-ins or fine-grain sharing capabilities. That’s where Google Latitude stands out, even though it feels much more utilitarian right now.
Tend towards simplicity
My hope is that, as a whole, these location technologies tend towards smart, automated ways of sharing that minimize privacy concerns and maximize relevancy. I don’t like choosing from lists or organizing my friends. I want to take lots of photos and know that it’s easy to share the images with the people that matter the most, without anyone worrying about the “wrong” people seeing them.
Focusing on location is one solution, but it will be exciting to see what else the community comes up with to tackle this complex problem.
Closed social networks FTW, pt.1: A problem emerges
At a family party this summer, I took a lot of pictures. I really enjoy taking pictures because I like to remember what were doing, what was happening, and who was there. I also really enjoy taking pictures because I like looking at them with other people. There have been times when I’ve pulled my camera out and people say, incredulously, “What do you do with all of those pictures?” Granted, I may be winding up for my 150th shot that hour, but my answer is always “I look at them alone, all by myself, at night.”
I’m kidding, of course. All I want to do after I’ve taken photos is to share them. I want to put together and album and inspire a wave of comments and get everyone excited about the next time we get together.
But at this family party this summer, during breakfast after a great evening of partying and dancing and eating and drinking, there was concern. Would all of the photos that I took of everyone partying and dancing and eating and drinking be posted to Facebook? Would they plastered all across my blog on the internet? Was there any time left before I had irresponsibly violated everyone’s privacy?
The concerns were justifiable and understandable. I have lots of younger cousins who are applying to schools in the next few years, and any evidence of debauchery — no matter how fallacious — might jeopardize their admission.
But the uproar left me frustrated. I had lots of great shots, many of which I knew everyone would like to see. Photos of my dad and his siblings, of couples dancing, of cousins laughing, and of uncles BBQ’ing. But they might have been mixed in with shots of a youths sitting tables with beer bottles, or, even worse, red Solo cups.
When I was back home, I imported the photos, tagged them, made an album, and then pondered my next move. There were at least 4 different layers of sharing I would need in order to ensure that only the certain people that were “allowed” to see certain shots. Deciding that everyone had seemed more concerned with not seeing the photos, I didn’t bother creating 4+ different albums of the same event for 30 different people. But I still wanted to share the memories, and just hated the idea that I had to do so much work to appease all of the parties involved.
And so a problem had presented itself.
New York, September 1, 1933
Rockefeller Center, New York City. RCA Building, general view from the old Union Club.
@138th St., 8:45pm
The skyline in Harlem is really different from the rest of Manhattan. It’s easy to forget that you’re even on the same island since all of the sky-scraping icons are so far away that they look like they’re the same height as everything else. Instead of the extreme highs and lows, you get a rolling skyline punctuated with churches and water towers.
This is a view looking west towards Morningside Park. The park is mountainous terrain in terms of NYC geography, another thing that sets the area apart from the rest of the city.
Apartment shopping forces you to look at the city in a different way. You develop a strong interest in what’s happening above, up in the buildings, because that’s where you’ll be living.
While the search is on, you start to notice moments were people have done the unexpected. Above is the top apartment of a building on Delancey St. The thing looks like it just landed from space, hanging over the edges the older building beneath it.
This photo doesn’t show it well, but the tall length of windows on the right side give view to a spiral staircase that takes you from the bottom to top floors. The slab walls give some privacy to the roof patios with holes to peek down at the street.
I would love to live here.
