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Posts tagged "Sharing"

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YouTube’s Snapchat sharing feature sounds cool – but is it just a gimmick?
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YouTube's latest social feature is letting users share videos to Snapchat as stickers. If you liked a video that a friend or family member might be interested in, you can immediately share it via Snapchat in the form of a sticker slapped onto the snap.

The social feature, available on both iOS and Android smartphones, pulls up the Snapchat app when you select it from the 'Share' menu on a YouTube video. A handy box containing the video's thumbnail and title will appear on your snap. And after you've taken a photo, you can adjust the thumbnail's size, angle and location on the snap. Then, when you've sent your snap to a friend, they can open the YouTube video by simply tapping the link embedded in the thumbnail.

The new sharing process eschews the need to directly copy a link from YouTube for pasting into Snapchat. Instead, one tap of that Share button is all you need to transfer the video to your snap, with all info and the link contained in one convenient snippet.

Analysis: Improvement or gimmick?

Snapchat YouTube sharing

(Image credit: Snapchat)

Within the confines of Snapchat, this new YouTube video-sharing feature sounds great. It requires fewer taps and link management and means Snapchat doesn't have to rely on your clipboard for copied content. Being able to customize the embedded video's placement, size, and angle is nice, too. But are Snapchat users really going to be impressed by this feature, and more importantly, will people use it?

The real issue here lies in whether or not Snapchat is the most convenient social platform with which to share YouTube videos. While this overhaul to sharing YouTube videos via Snapchat is an improvement, it's really just a nifty addition to what is still a cumbersome process.

You still have to create a snap to host the YouTube snippet. That in itself could be a decently lengthy process, depending on your own preferences and attention to detail when it comes to taking snaps. In this case, it would be much quicker and easier to simply share a YouTube link through more conventional social platforms, like Whatsapp, Discord, or even Twitter and Facebook depending on the group of contacts you wish to reach.

It's still a win for avid Snapchat users, of course, especially those who use it as their primary social platform. We can even see there being some particularly creative uses of this YouTube video sharing feature. One example that comes to mind would be an online merchant taking a snap of their product and inserting a YouTube snippet that the user can open and learn more about the product.

Therein lies what we feel is the biggest issue with this update. It's harmless, and definitely doesn't detract from the Snapchat experience. However, it's also very situational, will work better for some more than others, and isn't something we see a swathe of Snapchat users flocking to in order to share their favorite YouTube videos with friends. There are quicker ways of doing that, even if those methods aren't quite as fun or creative.

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MusicMatch simplifies cross-platform music sharing for macOS users
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There are now so many streaming music services to choose from, it's become difficult to easily share links to songs. Sure, you can use the sharing option in Apple Music to send a friend a link to a track you love, but this is little help if they're not an Apple Music user.

And this is where MusicMatch can help. This free app makes it possible to open a shared music link you receive in whatever happens to be your favorite streaming app. So, someone could send you a link to a track on Spotify, but if you're one of the many people who has decided to move away from this particular streaming service, you can use MusicMatch to open the track in Tidal, Pandora, YouTube Music or several other alternative services.

In all, there's now support for seven streaming music platforms – namely Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music. In short, MusicMatch gives you a quick, easy and reliable way to open music links in the app of your choice.

We've already looked at the iOS version of MusicMatch as well as the web extension, but things have moved on a great deal in just two short months. We've already mentioned the newly expanded number of supported platforms. The addition of the likes of YouTube Music, Pandora and Tidal means that all of the key music streaming platforms are now covered, so whatever your preferred app is, you should be able to open links in it.

Cross-platform sharing

The idea is great, and the implementation is simple and effective.  When someone sends you a link to a track, album or even an artist on a particular streaming platform, you can just copy the link to the clipboard.

Fire up MusicMatch and the app will open the link in whatever you have configured as you preferred music streaming app. It's quick and painless, and significantly less drawn out than performing a search for whatever it is you have been sent.

Even better, if you have the MusicMatch extension for Safari installed, everything is taken care of for you automatically. There is no need to manually open the MusicMatch app as everything will be handled in the background. Getting set up is simplicity itself. Grab the app from the Mac App Store, and when you launch it you can indicate which of the seven supported music services is the one your use.

The ap also lets you create universal links to the music you want to share with others. Send a MusicMatch-created link to a friend and they can choose the app they want to use to listen to the music you want them to hear.

MusicMatch for macOS is available to download from the Mac App Store and more information is available on the MusicMatch website.

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Tech giants ‘should pay’ for sharing user info
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A new study has revealed that German Facebook users believe the social network should pay them $ 8 per month for sharing their contact information while US users would be content with just $ 3.50.

The study, titled “How Much is Privacy Worth Around the World and Across Platforms?”, was conducted by the Technology Policy Institute's (TPI) Jeffrey Prince and Scott Wallsten. It is the first study of its kind to attempt to quantify the value of online privacy and data.

TPI examined the habits of people in the US, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Argentina to compile its study in order to assess how much privacy is worth in each country.

The study also comes at time when consumers have become increasingly concerned over how tech giants and retailers have been collecting and monetizing their personal data.

The price of privacy

President and senior fellow at TPI, Scott Wallsten explained to Reuters how it is necessary to quantify the value of privacy before analyzing company's privacy policies, saying:

“Differences in how much people value privacy of different data types across countries suggests that people in some places may prefer weaker rules while people in other places might prefer stronger rules. Quantifying the value of privacy is necessary for conducting any analysis of proposed privacy policies.”

The study found that German users want to be paid more for letting technology companies share their personal data with third-parties than US consumers do. However, people in all the countries surveyed place the highest value on financial information, such as bank balances and biometric information, while location data is the least valuable.

According to the study, a technology platform would have to pay consumers $ 8.44 a month to share bank balance information, $ 7.56 to share fingerprint information, $ 6.05 to read someone's texts and $ 5.80 to share information on cash withdrawals. Surprisingly, survey participants want to be paid just $ 1.82 per month to share their location data.

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Via Reuters

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