Interesting that people are doing this, but most people use Facebook for storage/sharing second, for social/commenting first. It's not about the photos, it's about the comments attached to the photos. And about the status updates and wall posts and all the other communicative stuff.
Email doesn't handle that, because email doesn't let interested observers chip in. One-to-one has its drawbacks.
that's true, I guess it would only take Dropbox to add commenting on the sharing pages they now create. But it's mostly about the perms for me (which these shared pages don't seem to offer), I know who I share a DB folder with. And in my particular case, the comments happen over the phone, or when my family comes over, on skype and actually some to/fro email (although it's annoying when it happens there).
A comments page but also a newsfeed to track the comments happening.
It's a bit catchword-y, but I like the phrase "ambient social" to describe the appeal of Facebook in one key sense: it's not about directed conversations, it's about creating opportunities for conversations which other people might take you up on. I post a status not because I want to talk about myself, but because I'm sending out a feeler for if anybody else wants to begin a conversation. (Which is why Twitter doesn't appeal to me the same way: it's nowhere near as easy to track conversations.)
Yes, exactly. I was noting the amusing fact that Dropbox uses S3, but using S3 alone already offered exactly the functionality they're launching today for less money. Dropbox is adding is a brand name and an easier-to-use GUI.
Agreed. The difference between "how easy it is to share a link on S3" and on Dropbox is a million miles. Sure, actually sharing the link on S3 is easy, but getting the file onto S3, setting up security buckets, yadda yadda is non-trivial to low-tech users.
Email doesn't handle that, because email doesn't let interested observers chip in. One-to-one has its drawbacks.