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December 05, 2009, 06:02 AM
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The "Send" Feature....
The no-sign-on-required killer family sharing app we have all been looking for?
Almost...
As is you can set multiple email address to share your public (or all) your photos with automatically when you upload them. You can also choose a selection for one time sharing.
All it needs to complete the equation is some kind of tag based filtering... share all photos having ANY of "these tags blah blah" to user@example.com.
I might tag a photo of my brother with "forfamily", "formom", "forbro"... My mother's tag filter would be "forfamily, formom"? My brother's: "forfamily, forbro". They would both get the photo in this case.
They'd get them as emails as they like to, without having to learn/join some website they may never need (unless they want to do the same in reverse).
Hmmm.
That's the tag hack idea approach... the whole thing could be rolled up into some more UI digestible concept of "audience" or "recipients"... some of which are represented by email addresses, some of which are other 23 user accounts, ? Providing recipients an opt-out mechanism would quickly follow considering the potentially frequent nature of the notifications.
Apologies. I know this is not a 23 ideas forum.... but the feature was so close to what we need I couldn't help it.
PS, it seems "send" and adding an email address as a "contact" are closely related features... both allowing photo viewing (even private) without requiring an account on the other end.
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December 05, 2009, 06:26 AM
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23 uses place:variable for auto geotagging.
to maintain the convention 23 could use send:variable for auto email.
or maybe send:user@domain.tld - and then it wouldn't even need a GUI - just discard the tag after the notification email is sent.
the advantage there is that you could do ad hoc sharing without having to add anyone as an "email contact". the disadvantage is having to remember the email address and enter it each time.
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December 05, 2009, 06:29 AM
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unless it worked like "place:" does now.
the first time you enter the tag, you enter it like this:
send:user@domain.tld=mom
23 would send the photo email to mom, add mom as an email contact without autosend, and replace the long tag with send:mom for the purposes of anonymity.
then, subsequently, you could use send:mom, or the current "manual send" feature.
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December 05, 2009, 08:34 AM
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December 05, 2009, 08:41 AM
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23 already does intuitive, with manual send.
anything tag based is going to be somewhat unintuitive, because there at least one stage of the process without a dedicated GUI.
but then if you add a GUI, it is going to be less automated.
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December 05, 2009, 08:59 AM
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you could also build up "send groups" this way.
send:family=user1@domain.tld
send:family=user2@domain.tld
then on subsequent photos tagged send:family, send to those two email addresses.
of course, this is not mutually exclusive with a GUI based way of fashioning these groups in http://www.23hq.com/striatic/a/contacts?show=add
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 09:22 AM
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Yeah, the tag hack is probably a non-starter; if for no other reason than the fact that tags are public to all users. And having people's mail adresses (or even information about private sharing) visible to the community is not a good idea. (We could make the particular machine tags visibile only to the photo owner, but it wouldn't be easy for users to know what public and hidden -- so it's a hard pattern to establish.)
So, to achieve the killer app of family sharing:
a) Set up a closed photogroup -- it's hidden from non-member, only you can allow invite people, and you can even disable conversations and set it up so only you can post photos.
b) Set up the user to subscribe to your photos via email under contacts -- first my adding the contact and then by setting the subscribe value. Don't allow the family member to see your private photos.
b) Invite the family member into the photogroup -- they'll need to accept the invitation, but that's the only involvement needed from them.
d) When you upload a private photo that you want to push to the family member via mail, simple set it to private -- but add it to your new private photogroup as well.
That should do the trick. The neat thing about this is, that you can build in multiple permission levels here where Certain Other Photo Sharing Services only have all/friends/family you can extend to Girlfriend's Family, People At Work, Old Friends I Speak To Only Once A Year as well. You can tweak the setting of the group to your liking; for example, you might want to let other people upload to the group or even invite in new members.
(The obvious downside is that users need to accept invitations; so don't give the group too weird names.)
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December 05, 2009, 09:38 AM
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regarding email address display, i was assuming that send:mom=user@domain.tld would be immediately converted to send:mom. the email would never be visible on the site.
send:mom itself could vanish automatically [or never be added, really]. maybe it is best not to think of it as a "tag", but rather a "command" that uses the tagging system as a command line.
that's pretty irrelevant though, if you think there's a better way.
what you're saying sounds like it would work okay, provided the invitation request is accepted.
does the recipient need to create an account here to accept the request?
also, will that method work with public photos that you just want to make sure your family or a certain person is notified by email about?
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 09:45 AM
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does the recipient need to create an account here to accept the request?
An account entry is basically added automatically; there's no signup involved. All the invitee needs to do is click an accept link in the invitation email.
also, will that method work with public photos that you just want to make sure your family or a certain person is notified by email about?
In the method described above all your public photos + the private photos in the photogroups are sent to the family member. We don't have a way of limiting the email subscriptions specifically to photos (whether public or private) in the group.
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December 05, 2009, 09:51 AM
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sounds like it'll work. it just isn't quite as efficient as being able to add send:mom as a tag in pixelpipe and just have everything work.
you have to move it to the group manually when you get home, where you can almost just as easily use the "send" interface without any photogroup shenanigans.
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 09:58 AM
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You can configure email uploads to automatically post uploaded photos to a group, so it's simply a matter of creating an email address that posts photos as private and adds the uploaded photo to your mom group.
(If you really want it tag based, you can have Pixelpipe send to that specific mail addresss when you write the routing tag mom in the Pixelpipe app.)
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December 05, 2009, 10:09 AM
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right! i forgot about the custom email addresses redirecting to photogroups.
i guess ideal would be, in the custom email editing page, some fields to put email addresses and contacts you want notified when a photo is uploaded via that address. then there's no tags, no photogroups, just enter the email and you're done with it.
thanks for the pixelpipe tip too, by the way, i was wondering how to get the flexibility of the custom addresses, with the "correct rotation" and "full resolution" power of pixelpipe. now i know. : ]
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 10:12 AM
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Sure, but then you'd be limited to uploading via email whenever to wanted to send a photo to mom ;-)
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December 05, 2009, 10:16 AM
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Thanks for the photogroup approach description Steffen. I hadn't realized becoming a pseudo user could be so seamless as to allow approaches like that.
But both approaches have pros & cons as I could imagine them playing out...
Pro Groups:
- Group context history of shared items
- ability to un-share (if original is not included in email notifications)
- share order is based on date added to photogroup?
Pro Tags/Commands (or Tags + a UI to also generate them):
- Easier to specify using mobile and desktop tools at upload time.
- Easier to develop against with API
- Tag search shared history context?
- ability to un-share (by removing the tag)... but leaves a hanging invitation?
Con Photogroups:
- photogroup list clutter... confusing if you start to maintain a lot of these groups simply for sharing contexts.
- Piling on of tasks photogroups are intended for... rather than targeted tools (always one of my gripes about the groups on flickr).
- security/privacy. groups can be toggled public by accident, or the invite mechanisms might be extended to members other than the creator allowing unintended guests.
Con Tags/Commands:
- Having to constantly look at all photos for those tags to trigger, rather than being limited by the groups and their members.
- Less intuitive (depending on UI).
- How to address that hide-email aspect.
My original thought of custom user defined tag filters on existing "send everything" email contacts might be just enough for power sharing, but so much as to befuddle those who tend to want to share everything.
Really all of this discussion is about "push sharing"... which flickr barely accommodates with "share-this" one-off and "guest passes". None of which provide automation mechanisms for those special family members and friends, perhaps of the luddite variety that have only just groked email (and maybe facebook).
The "send" and login-free email sharing with contacts is a tantalizing start. I'll have to try some experimental setups. Thanks again for adding to the discussions!
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December 05, 2009, 10:21 AM
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ps, where is this custom email address routing you speak of?
nm, found it. Didn't make it that far into settings the first time through.
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December 05, 2009, 10:28 AM
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don't forget...
pro groups:
exists now and does not require additional development time which may be otherwise directed ; ]
on a side note, thank you steffen. i've upgraded to plus based on these discussions and my experience with the current functionality and community here. i was going to wait until there was a clear migration path from flickr, but i'm confident that this will probably happen and am happy with how you've listened to and acted on our concerns. i also like the photographers i've encountered here so far, which is kind of important too.
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December 05, 2009, 10:33 AM
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just one other thing - if photogroups are the vector for sharing to groups of people via email, it becomes more important to be able to nuke the groups if they fall into disuse or the invitations aren't accepted.
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 10:33 AM
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At 23 it's under Options -> Email upload. At Pixelpipe you can add a routing tag under My pipes.
One bridge between the approaches would be to use tags to add photos to a photogroup. For example, adding the tag group:next (since the short name of the group is next) would post the photo here, and adding group:mom would post it to the pre-defined mom group. (I really feel I've come up with a brilliant solution here, so be sure to shoot me down if I'm wrong...)
The approach would have all the pros of the both photogroups and tags + would be implementable in about an hour.
As for the cons of photogroups...
Piling on of tasks photogroups are intended for...
Photogroups are intended for private sharing of photos; I see this as one of the core features, not a bonus add-on.
groups can be toggled public by accident
As the group founder you control if other people than you get to invite members. Sure, it's a con, but it's a pretty managable one.
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 10:38 AM
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Oh, and for the con of photogroup list clutter, I'm certain this can be solved by updates to the UI. I.e. having public photogroups listed apart from closed/personal ones.
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December 05, 2009, 10:49 AM
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"(I really feel I've come up with a brilliant solution here, so be sure to shoot me down if I'm wrong...)"
no, that's bloody genius. it simplifies everything.
it is also good in general, non family sharing situations, to add photos to groups in any situation.
"I'm certain this can be solved by updates to the UI. I.e. having public photogroups listed apart from closed/personal ones."
this would be necessary.
there is one more con, and that is:
groups con: we never would have thought of it if you hadn't explained it to us.
i'm not sure how to address that con, but it is a pretty important one. even if the system works great once people set it up, figuring out that you're supposed to set it up and how are important considerations for the concept to scale.
i think the main reason we were thinking about tags at first is that groups were the flickr founders' idea for doing exactly what we're describing - like creating a "wedding" group for people going to your wedding to join - and it just never worked at all. too complicated and too many moving parts and permissions.
the main difference on 23 is that no one needs an account to join the group. that's a pretty important difference, but i'm not sure it is enough to get the idea across without lengthy explanation. i'm not going to suggest a solution to that "con", but i do think it is a significant element.
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December 05, 2009, 10:51 AM
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tag to group shortcuts would be pretty sweet regardless of the usefulness in this particular case being discussed.
It seems contacts/send-recipients added via an email are auto assigned an ID too... and show up as a contact. Maybe stri's suggestion of also allowing "send:contact-id" as tag commands would still fit nicely too?
The steps would then be:
1) add an email address using "add contact"... but don't enable any of the auto-sending.
2) tag "send:generated-id"
These generated ids may not be user-intuitive though, as they appear to be email before the @ plus an auto incrementing value for duplicates. I imagine the recipient, if they created a full account, could change this later? (and you'd have to pay attention for those changes, hopefully your tags would auto-change too... so they would have to be more than just tags in the back end).
When you want to send (at upload time) to a group of folks in one swoop, you would resort to this photogroup method we are discussing with the group:name tag.
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December 05, 2009, 11:11 AM
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maybe what we're really asking for, and this is a much larger concept, is "smart tags" functionality.
1] create smart tag
2] define smart tag
ex. whenever i tag a photo "black and white", add it to my "black and white" album and add it to the "black and white" and "noir" photogroups.
ex. whenever i tag a photo "for family", send to email address x and 23 members y and z.
ex. whenever i tag a photo "me", mark it as private.
ex. whenever i tag a photo "tweet", post it to twitter.
again, this is a much larger concept that in some ways duplicates and replaces the custom email addresses. it could be more powerful, however, since it is easier to mix and match commands.
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December 05, 2009, 11:18 AM
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PS, I have a "send" email configured (all public at upload time)... but have yet to get any emails from it for my test photo to the test email addy... what kind of frequency are these polled on? I sent the same one using the one-off tools and it went through.
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December 05, 2009, 11:21 AM
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re: smart tags with associated custom actions...
While a great concept (especially for mobile shortcuts)... I think we are definitely into power user territory here. "Targeted content shared easily with family not on 23" should be in the newbie category though I would think.
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December 05, 2009, 11:24 AM
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on the other hand, now that i think about it, "smart tags" duplicates the custom email addresses to a point where much of the code and almost all the GUI has already been created.
change "Add a new upload address..." to "add a new Smart Tag" and put another tab at the top of the options page...
anyway, i've got to shut up about this now.
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December 05, 2009, 11:33 AM
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except to say..
ex. whenever i add the tag "eastlake", add the tags "seattle" and "washington"
ex. whenever i tag a photo "holga", add the tags "film", "toy camera"and "lo-fi", add it to the "film" and "holga" albums and "holga fans" and "funky fotos" photogroups.
: ]
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 11:44 AM
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Alright guys, the group:* tag is available now. Dasically the tag can use the short name of a group (i.e. group:next) or the id of a group (i.e. group:5145643). See http://www.23hq.com/steffen/photo/5148313
So, a few notes...
I really like the idea of smart tags; but then I'm a geeky power user myself and I'm pretty sure we won't get too much traction with this feature. For now, we'll have place:* and group:* and see if we can expand on that over time.
And yes, having this as a hidden feature is a shame. So I'm thinking that we'll add some a nice way under Contacts to add permission groups. Under the hood, it'll be powered by photogroups but from a user perspective it'll look much more simple. We'll have to protype the look and interaction a little before then though -- so enjoy being able to use the hidden feature until it's made approachable to the crowds ;-)
E-mail are sent a few hours late to make sure we can group content: That is, you won't get single emails for every upload; instead you'll get one email with all the contents added over the past few hours across the people you're following.
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December 05, 2009, 11:49 AM
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sweet!
i could tell you had added the feature, because i saw the site go down like it did when you added the other changes earlier today.
"I'm pretty sure we won't get too much traction with this feature."
i think if "smart tags" were in the settings along with the email options, they would get a fair amount of use - especially since they are labour saving when it comes to tagging. that's just my opinion though. i think they would get at least as much use as custom email addresses.
regardless, thanks for the group:* feature - i'm pretty sure clickykbd will be using it at least.
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December 05, 2009, 11:57 AM
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hehe - you can use this feature to add other people's photos to groups:
http://www.23hq.com/dotism/photo/5149629?
congrats, you just accidentally built an "invite photo to photogroup" tool.
only took flickr 3 damn years grumblegrumble
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 12:09 PM
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Yes, I just realised -- it's a sweet feature, but not really the intended one ;-)
Edit: I should have noted the that the issue was fixed within minutes of the report; that is before this post was made.
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December 05, 2009, 07:26 PM
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I was following this conversation via my email subscription which doesn't pick up the edits... so I came here to say, "surely that doesn't mean you can tag someone's private photo and add it to a group so anyone can then see it??" But I see from Steffen's edit that he removed that unintended feature.
I do like the 'tag to add to group' thing.
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December 05, 2009, 08:12 PM
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so long as it didn't work on private photos, i think tag to add would be great as is.
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December 05, 2009, 08:17 PM
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December 05, 2009, 08:23 PM
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And yes, having this as a hidden feature is a shame. So I'm thinking that we'll add some a nice way under Contacts to add permission groups. Under the hood, it'll be powered by photogroups but from a user perspective it'll look much more simple. Perhaps it could use a different name for that behavior. It behaves kind of like a distribution list, or an exploder. Not the best names... Edited to add... um, people arbitrarily adding your photos to groups without your consent...? Even to groups you can't see/join?
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December 05, 2009, 08:31 PM
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photos can already be removed after the fact. with the privacy issue gone I'm not sure the harm.
flickr has the same thing, they just call it "galleries".
no one here takes issue with that.
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December 05, 2009, 08:36 PM
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Do you get any kind of notification though?
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December 05, 2009, 08:37 PM
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So just so I understand this. A photogroup can be open to all, open via approval, or open via invitation. I have seen that 'open via invitation' is sort of equivalent to Flickr's private groups. The group name does not appear on the photo unless one is a member of the group, and visiting the group requires you to sign in first (to check membership, presumably). I assume that this 'invite only' group is the only type that is private?
Open, and join with approval, are both public?
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December 05, 2009, 08:41 PM
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@Gustavo: Do you get any kind of notification though?
I just added a tag to one of your photos. Can you tell?
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December 05, 2009, 08:43 PM
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December 05, 2009, 08:45 PM
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okay, then maybe not "as is". notification of added tags would be useful for other reasons anyway.
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December 05, 2009, 08:47 PM
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(And yay, my mother just joined!)
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December 05, 2009, 08:47 PM
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It did surprise me that anyone can add tags, and not having any notification at all means that my photos could be grouped by anyone without my knowledge (by grouped, I mean, grouped by tag). I can see that quickly getting used for mischief, with people tagging older photos that I'd probably never revisit.
Hmm... just something to consider.
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December 05, 2009, 08:50 PM
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It's very different to galleries. Galleries are very explicitly curations made by an individual - to the extent that those curations are intimately tied to that individual's account. Groups are large, loose collections of individuals. There's no 'ownership' of the pool.
Adding a photo to gallery is very different to to adding it to a pool.
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December 05, 2009, 08:58 PM
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@Gustavo: Can't tell.
I added the tag "windscreen" to your windscreen photo (aka windshield).
I was going to remove it, but I don't have permission.
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December 05, 2009, 09:03 PM
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December 05, 2009, 09:04 PM
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Steffen>Alright guys, the group:* tag is available now. Dasically the tag can use the short name of a group (i.e. group:next) or the id of a group (i.e. group:5145643). Out of curiosity, what happens if one changes the group's short name? I haven't tried it yet, but I understand that here (unlike in flickr) one can repeatedly change a group's url. What is the recommended stable way to link to a group/thread/posting? (I see no explicit permalinks.)
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December 05, 2009, 09:51 PM
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Lots of little ramifications (good and bad) to these shortcuts. I think it's fair to say you (Steffen) could use the beta testers here to ferret out unintended consequences, such as GustavoG's latest point.
(Perhaps it deserves it's own topic... as we've departed a bit from Family Sharing)
The short name change problem is similar to the user-id problem as it relates to the "send:user-id" suggestion from earlier (when referencing accounts/contacts you added as simply an email address). Perhaps a solution would apply to both too?
Funny that Gustavo's Mom joined... good. But the feature I was grasping for was the one that doesn't require this step. ;-)
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Team 23
December 05, 2009, 10:07 PM
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Hey guys -- I'm offline tonight but thought I'd jump in with some clarifications: When a group name is changes, the photo's relation to the photogroup stays the same. So the photo isn't removed from the group just because the name changes. (The only issue is that the photo isn't automatically removed from the newly renamed group when the tag is removed. Something I can live with.)
To clarify, registered users can help you tag photos (but of course, not use the magic group tags to post your photo to a group!) and you should be getting an email notification about the changes. The notification is delayed about 15 minutes to allow us to group multiple taggings in a single email -- but if you're not getting a notification, let us know. This machanism has been in place for the past 3-4 years and I haven't heard of abuse; however in a busy community we would need to reevaluate the feature. So: If you fall victim to abuse, report to it to team@23hq.com and we'll fix it ;-)
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December 05, 2009, 10:26 PM
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Thanks Steffen, so I guess Gustavo will have received notification by now that I tagged his photo? Perhaps he can chime in and let us know. :)
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December 05, 2009, 11:14 PM
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I didn't get any notification of the tag Brenda added, not on the web interface, not via email. Funny that Gustavo's Mom joined... good. But the feature I was grasping for was the one that doesn't require this step. ;-) No surprise that she joined... she also joined flickr and kept track of family-only photos actively. flickr's failure at family sharing was mostly with other family members, who don't check in regularly.
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December 14, 2009, 01:54 AM
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Steffen>In the method described above all your public photos + the private photos in the photogroups are sent to the family member. We don't have a way of limiting the email subscriptions specifically to photos (whether public or private) in the group.
So I was about to set up a private group for sharing the private photos with family, when I realized that they'd get also notification of all public images I post. It really would be nice if this weren't the case.
What would be best in fact would be to allow non-members (and also members of course) to subscribe to email notifications of stuff added to a group... not stuff I post including what I add to the group, but any photos posted to the group. More than one person could be allowed to join the group and post to it, and interested parties would get notification of what was posted to it - no matter by whom - and without the notification being "cluttered" by stuff not posted to the group.
If this can be done already, I'd love to know!
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December 14, 2009, 07:46 AM
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I agree. I had actually thought that is what was going to happen when we invited non-members to a private group based on Steffen's suggested approach.
Instead it seems their "temporary account" gets subscribed to us (all our stuff), and email notifications are not on by default... they'd have to activate them from the manage subs page. Which itself, is not obvious to get to as a unofficial account... because the "subscriptions" menu item is hidden to these visitors... but yet possible to access via a group or photo with the "see in subscriptions" link.
I'd like to be able to get email notification per photogroup on the PHOTOS added, and have some way of leading an invited non-member to this option easily?
Or just ditch this whole photogroup method and rethink it based on sharing photos "at" non-member contacts or contact groupings based on tag shortcuts or the like? More akin to what is possible with "send", but limited to a subset of our photos.
It also just feels a little messy in the "sharing with non-members" goal... because the cookie after accepting an invitation will cause that nag message to persist, perhaps resulting in sign-ups, but that wasn't really "our" goal? And if I'm understanding correctly, if they switch computers or browsers, they won't have this access anymore unless they have completed the sign up OR re-clicked the invitation link (which may have an expirey?)
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December 14, 2009, 03:19 PM
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It also just feels a little messy in the "sharing with non-members" goal...
This is not really my goal. I can get the family members to register and even to join a group... did that on flickr. The problem is what happens next. Being a private group and private photos, how can they follow up on new content? Flickr's paradigm is "have them check regularly", and that simply doesn't work. The "guest pass" method is an entirely different beast, with many advantages but one main disadvantage: the need to package content into a set prior to mailing. I'd rather be able to trickle photos instead. Years ago they promised authenticated RSS feeds for private stuff, but never implemented. (As an aside I don't know how many people are comfortable with RSS feeds, in the family.)
I'd think the best solution would be for interested people to register, join a group, and subscribe to "digest-style" email updates about photo additions to the group. If they needn't register, also good. If they can select email frequency, even better. If the same subscription can cover both discussions and photo addition, best of all.
The current photogroup system at 23 supports what I described... but only for discussion notifications. I don't see currently a clear method for just sending periodic updates of new private image additions.
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December 14, 2009, 03:31 PM
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Incidentally, there is a site that does this quite well: geni.com. A typical "new photos" update from Geni looks like this:
Subject: Your Family & Friends have added photos on Geni...
New photos from Family & Friends
[person1 name] added 5 photos.
[thumbnails]
[link to person1's album] 39 photos total
In this album: [short list of tagged people] and 7 others.
[person2 name] added 2 photos.
[thumbnails]
[link to person2's album] 5 photos total
In this album: [short list of tagged people] and 2 others.
...in case you're wondering "so why don't you use Geni for sharing family photos?", one reason is that Geni's photo feature (as a family genealogy site) is mostly geared towards sharing "photos of people", not all "family photos". The goal is mostly to create an album of "this is what we look like", and not "this is what we did this week".
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Team 23
December 14, 2009, 04:51 PM
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This is getting to be a pretty long thread, but I'm taking two things away from it:
a) Users need to be able to get email subscriptions from photogroups in addition to subscribing to photos from specific users. When you invite a user and that user accepts the invitation, we'll turn this email on by default -- so getting family members to see your photos is achieved in a single click in the invitation mail. I'll look into how hard this feature is to implement -- but frankly I think we'll have it done quite soon.
b) With this add-on, family sharing through photogroups has a lot of upsides: You can control exactly who gets the mail; You can open up to sharing group and let other members post; You can post to members via the group:* tag; You can combine this approach with subscriptions to public photos in the same subscription email; And it's something that's already implemented and ready to go.
The real downside is that the approach isn't documented well and that it takes some setting up. We'll need to address this by adding some private-group-sharing-stuff under Contacts. The timeframe on this is more uncertain, but in the meantime the feature is available if hard to approach.
Does this like a fair re-cap, or am I missing something?
(I'm gonna rule out the ditch-photogroups-entirely-and-build-something-with-magic-tags approach for now.)
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December 14, 2009, 05:08 PM
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If I understand point (a) correctly, a user would be able to subscribe to email notifications of new photos added to a group. This would be distinct from getting email notifications of discussions posted to the group, and also distinct from getting email notifications of what any specific member posted.
If such subscription were available in some kind of "digest" mode (say, once a day? settable?), the whole package would be perfect for the family photo sharing mode.
Looking forward to it. :)
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Team 23
December 14, 2009, 05:16 PM
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If such subscription were available in some kind of "digest" mode (say, once a day? settable?), the whole package would be perfect for the family photo sharing mode.
It would included on the same mail that contains photos from users you're subscribing to. I think the current interval works pretty well where you'll get a set of photos about once a day depending on how many people you follow.
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December 15, 2009, 12:09 AM
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I'll have to subscribe to a few contacts via email to see what these mailings and frequencies look like. But it sounds like you are on the right track for sure.
The "auto-enabled" aspect of these subscription emails is what adds the benefit for the member that never follows through with the rest of the sign up process. It's probably there, but I think a clear unsubscribe mechanism for these non-members goes without saying. I would hope it be per group/user... and not "just" a global opt-out. Gotta test before I see any of that.
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December 15, 2009, 10:43 AM
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(I'm gonna rule out the ditch-photogroups-entirely-and-build-something-with-magic-tags approach for now.)
Actually, if all bits of the implementation you describe fall into place. This becomes possible anyway. The loaded "group:foobar" shortcuts will send photos to these private sharing groups. Provided the periodic email notifications contain links that work regardless of if the sign up process has been completed... these special group tags become the magical tag approach.
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