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Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

sling.me

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Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#111

Post by aye »

jameshart wrote: post #30

We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal…

This is more about about promoting sharing as a cultural behavior than making money on this particular product. By incentivizing sharing, companies end up with more personal information. It forces lurkers to participate (some might argue that's a good thing).

The service forces you to pay for content with your own content, whereas before the payment was implicit, or at least invisible -- as long as you were in the store, you consented to being monitored.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#112

Post by downandout »

devindotcom wrote: post #39
jameshart wrote: post #30

We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal…

I'm with you to a point, but this objection is a close relative of the "we can put a man on the moon, but we can't ______?" argument. There are other companies, not focused from the beginning on advancing social connection in the Internet age, that are spending billions of dollars and millions of man-hours on improving the world in other ways.

> improving the world in other ways

Are you implying that Slingshot has improved the world?

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#113

Post by XorNot »

tothepixel wrote: post #67
cliveowen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to see someone who shares my exact same sentiment. I mean, when I read "but there's a catch, they have to send something first" I thought it was a joke. First of all, the fact that they made another snapchat with just a little spin on it says to me that they don't really know what they're doing; they're just after money, there's no vision behind it. Secondly, with all the useful products and services they c…

I think it's more indicative of the way applications are being used these days. Create a gimmick -> gain incredible popularity -> try to monetize your product -> users switch to the next gimmick -> create a new gimmick.

Which does rather imply there's a big crash coming.

That's not a zero-sum nor value-creating cycle: everyone will slowly haemorrhage users, at the risk that the next "thing" isn't something that easily centralizes to a corporation - i.e. a generation of school kids who get big into some type of mesh-networked thing which solely goes device to device.

It would only have to be created once.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#114

Post by ar_turnbull »

The great unbundling continues.

I understand Facebook is worried about a new trend wiping them out, but I don't see how a defensive moat of look-alikes is going to save them. Other than Messenger, are any of Facebook's new apps gaining users? Or are they like Poke — destined to be retired.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#115

Post by encoderer »

jameshart wrote: post #30

We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal…

Yes. As it turns out, people really like other people.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#116

Post by encoderer »

alttab wrote: post #59
devindotcom wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced either, but I'm not going to try it. My immediate thought was DOA.

Same here. Its like sharing, but you have to share to let people share. Seems fucking stupid. Sending a picture is essentially asking for a picture. I can't imagine enough use cases where I think "I'll definitely want to send them this picture if they send me one first" to make this app stick, outside of sending naked pictures of myself in exchange for another one - which I never do. Outside of using the "must-share-…

Yes, you are clearly not their target market.

> why would they literally create work to share? I simply don't get it.

I don't think they did? You can send a pic as easy as ever. But there is "work" to receive it. If I want to see what a friend just sent me, I snap a pic of something and send it back.

I think this will easily have DAU numbers that most startups would kill for. Whether it'll be big enough to justify at Facebook, though, remains to be seen.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#118

Post by patcon »

I don't like this. I'm a proponent of the "slow web" -- a philosophy that treasures real-life reciprocation over online engagement. It eschews the idea of endorphin-releasing actions with the sole purpose but draining cognitive reservoirs.

The idea of engaging in conversations with no point except "sharing" -- with reduced focus on meaningful dialogue and increased focus on the simplistic pleasure of "getting mail" -- I find this kinda repulsive.

Perhaps this is grandiose, but it strikes me as the lowest common denominator of human interaction.

Not looking forward to stuff like this...

EDIT: And yes, I concede that it's pretty ingenious...! But I still don't like it. It's too much of a psychological hack for my tastes

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#119

Post by togedoge »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #96
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #91

I wanted to have a look if any of my friends had this and apparently it can't be installed in the UK. Out of interest has anybody got this outside the US yet?

Not available in Canada.

Not available in Australia

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#120

Post by unclebucknasty »

jameshart wrote: post #30

We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal…

>the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal technology has produced: "A new way to share photos and videos"

Where's the double upvote link?

And, it's not just the waste of resources/developer talent. It's also the complete dumbing down of everyone consuming this stuff. If this "succeeds", then we now have yet another novel way to waste our precious time replacing real relationships with superficial interactions, and otherwise doing very little of actual consequence.

We are iterating on superficiality, distraction, and nothingness. I suppose one fine day, we'll perfect it.

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