What I want is simple: a way to share certain things with my friends, and other things with everyone. “Simple” is the keyword there because you can do that with Facebook, but it’s not simple enough. I want flick-one-switch simple, not create list, use drop-down, choose Everyone or Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, Customize simple. A few startups are starting to get this level of ease — Treehouse is one of them.
When we last wrote about Treehouse back in June, I noted that it was perhaps the perfect app for sharing Bros Icing Bros pictures. Sadly, that meme died at the hands of Smirnoff Ice. But luckily, Treehouse has become even more useful since then. Notably, the iPhone photo-sharing app has a revamped interface that allows you to comment directly from photo pages, swipe left and right to quickly browse photos, and swipe down to see comments, likes, and location. There are also some nice new overlays that show all this information. And you can now leave photo comments.
They’ve added these features while keeping the app simple, which I like. It’s not trying to do too much, just share photos amongst your friends. That said, as I alluded to, they did add the element to make it easy to post photos outside of your social circle. On the post screen, there is now a “Friends Only” toggle that is set to “On” but default. If you swipe this to “Off”, a new option appears that asks if you want to post your photo to Facebook. You can choose “On” or “Off” for this, and if you choose “Off”, the photo is simply shared with everyone on Treehouse. Easy.
Yes, I know you can basically do this type of sharing with Facebook, but it’s too convoluted with all those options. And Treehouse has the default set to “Friends Only” as it should be. I still believe Facebook needs this simple toggle to switch between sharing with your friends or with everyone (though I’d prefer “followers” like Twitter). As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is well aware, the UI and UX is very important for this sharing dynamic — and I think Treehouse has nailed it.
Treehouse co-founder Chrys Bader says the app had over 100,000 downloads in August. The latest version is 0.3 which is a free download from the App Store.
Fliggo is instant video communities. Fliggo offers anyone the ability to create their own video-uploading site, and share the videos either privately or publicly. Fliggo hosts and streams the videos, and gives site owners easy management tools to customize and monitor activity on the site. While the basic service is free, Fliggo charges for commercial features such as serving ads on a site or controlling the domain that it is on. Create the next YouTube or just a private place...
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