Seems like everybody got their panties in a twist the past few days, after Dropbox announced a revised Terms of Service. Everybody went berzerk when they read:
By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service.
By reading this, some people thought it meant that they now owned everything you posted to your Dropbox and that they could use your files as they please. Keep in mind that Dropbox is an american company and that they must cover their asses legally or the company would be put in jeopardy.
Now, let’s be clear about what this means, since a lot of other services have the same terms. Basically, what they’re saying is that they need the user to give them a license in order for them to manipulate the files you post there.
As you can see, nothing dodgy here. People just have to realise that when they use services like this, they have to have the right to manipulate the files you put there in order for you to use the service. Almost every service who allows you to post files must have this kind of legalese in their terms of service.
So move along, nothing to see here.
Let’s be clear about this upfront. These are my initial impressions with the service. It doesn’t mean that they can’t change midway along with the evolution of the service. But as it stands, the path I see ahead is not promising. Let me break it to you then:
Stream
Stream has a pretty basic layout, very Facebook-esque and nothing to write home about. It’s competent and that’s it. Despite some minor usability quirks where it’s hard to figure it if it’s a control or a plain heading text, it’s good at what it is.
Photos
Visually it’s beautifully laid out but hard to split in chunks. It’s mixing every photo from every user I have listed as friend, so it’s hard to figure out who posted out. Yes, you can read the captions but that’s less than convenient. And the slideshow feature feels like an afterthought. Also, don’t get me started on instant upload. That’s scary as hell. I like to control which pictures get posted, thank you very much.
Circles
Circles are a gimmick. They’re basically buddy lists and the interface almost demands that you dump your friends into the right bucket. As anyone working in user profiling and segmentation could tell you, this is really hard to do. A bucket determines the kind of updates people see and some updates might be directed at more than one circle, but you can’t do that. You can add a friend to one or more circles, but then the nightmare of managing all of this starts. It kind of works if you have 30 buddies or so but it soon breaks apart. I just can’t see this working for the number of users people generally have on Facebook (+100). And I’m not even mentioning the hassle of having to add all your friends to a new social network yet again.
Hangout
Like pictures, this seems to be here just because they have a video chat feature and thought it was cool to add it. In real life, I doubt that a couple of friends would gather up online to talk to eachother via face chat at the same time. Yes, the novelty factor is there, but apart from a few tries at first, I see this dead at the water. Now, for business it makes sense, but this is a personal platform and doesn’t feel right to be using it for that.
Huddle
I’ve seen good comments about this, but I can’t figure out where this feature is hiding. So I’ll leave it for later.
So yes, a new social network built by Google. Is this their third try? Can’t blame them for trying? Is it going to replace Facebook? I don’t think so. Facebook is built around social and it’s going to be hard to mimic all its features. So, for now, I’ll see all the geeks and early adopters get really excited about the service, but if doesn’t change paths, it’s going into the dustbin like many others.