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Social Network Sharing Comes to OS X Mountain Lion

July 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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One of the more interesting features coming out soon in Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion release is the built in Social Sharing to Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, and Flickr.  When Mountain Lion becomes available later this month, it will not include Facebook, which if I had to bet will be timed to release at the same time iOS 6 ships.This video below provides and overview of how this social sharing works and how tightly Apple has integrated Social Media into the core functions of the operating system.  In my testing of this new feature what I felt was missing were the ability to post to fan pages or the ability to tag people in pictures, etc.  Within twitter while I could attach URL’s or Pictures, there was no way to shorten URL’s.   There were three Social Networks I would love to see added to this new feature:  YouTube, Google+, and Pinterest.  I hope over time either Apple adds these are opens this up to developers.
This integration, I think will be one of the most used features of the new OS, and again demonstrates how Apple continues to differentiate itself!   What do you think of this particular feature of Mountain Lion, and what features are you most interested in?   Are there other features you think Apple missed altogether?

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Filed Under: All things Apple, Featured, OSX Lion, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

facebook Groups – a little too friendly?

October 8, 2010 By 5 Comments
Apple Inc Fan

Yesterday Facebook announced three new sets of functionality that are designed to give you access to all of your information, enhance security, and solve the problem of how social your networks are by allowing you to group your friends by common interest.   The first feature to get rolled out yesterday was this new concept of social groups that allow you and your friends a place to share posts, events, and even have group chats!

Apple Inc Fan

So the concept is very simple, create a new group by selecting Create Group from the facebook home page.  Once there you only have to enter two pieces of information – name of the group and privacy setting.    With those two pieces of information entered you can optionally start adding your friends into your new group or enter  into the group!  

Once in the group you are the Administator where you can start adding posts or go to the Admin settings of the group where you can describe the group and pick an email address unique to that group.      This is where it gets a little interesting.   That email address that you specify  groupname@groups.facebook.com must be unique, so choose wisely and move quickly – It can not be changed once you set it up!

A Little Too Friendly
Now to make this new concept really friendly the rules of permissions have been stretched.  That new group I just created?  Well, if you’re a friend of mine, I can just add you to this group.  You will not get asked, prompted to accept, just a friendly facebook email saying that Skeeter added you to this new wiz bang group!  Woo Hoo – we are now connected at a Topic Level!
There is one fundamental flaw here – What If I don’t want to be pulled into a group on topic XYZ? Too bad for you!  You Loose! With the current implementation model there is not a setting you can turn on or off that will prevent this action!
While in theory I get the concept we are friends, you know what I am interested in so you add me to one of your new groups and heck I am only acting in your best interest,  right?   On paper that makes sense but I become a victim of being pulled into groups I potentially have no interest in!  For example I have a good friend who I know is not a fan of Apple, Inc.   What do I do?   As a joke I pick on him  and I pull him into my group Apple Inc Fans.   He has no choice, he is there with 20 other people, then the group starts joking with him that he really should like Apples.  The only choice he or anyone has at that point is to leave the group!

The problem with this?   He now has to take action, manually leaving the group.  He can not just ignore the request or actually hit an ignore button for this type of group.

What was Facebook possibly thinking when they implemented this feature?  What they need to do quickly is update the Edit Groups Settings to allow you to determine if you want to be added to groups automatically or prompted with a request!

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Filed Under: Featured, Social Media Tagged With: , ,