"Everyme uses your phone’s address book for sharing, and if people don’t have Everyme accounts, they can still see and post content through email and text messages."
This is a brilliant way to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem, which is probably the biggest problem a new social network is facing.
I don't want to share my kids' pictures with everyone on Facebook. And no, my mom is not going to join Google+ (nor should she), so having her receive the posts by emails for now is just brilliant.
That would work, but if you want to share with the same people again, you have to retype their addresses, at least with a copy and paste. With a good mobile platform it streamlines the process and can make sharing a much more spontaneous action, and with the concept of a personalized "circle", you also get a more intimate feel than an email thread :)
Facebook supports granular privacy for all posts via friend lists, and will even suggest friends to add to lists.
Want to share pics with just your family? Don't want to turn down a friend request from a coworker, but don't want them to see anything (Restricted list)? Facebook has these features. These social networks are going nowhere.
The lists on Facebook aren't shared. They're just my lists, nobody else can see who they're shared with. Socially this makes them utterly useless, it doesn't form communities. (Facebook groups does this, but it isn't central to the experience, like it is apparently in everyme)
Facebook also requires that everyone you share with has a Facebook account. When I have a party, I have to go and email everyone by hand who isn't on Facebook. You can put their emails into Facebook, but I assume that will make the recipient sign up, so I don't do it.
Both these improvements in Everyme make a lot of sense to me. If only it a) had DuckDuckGo like privacy, b) was truly distributed, c) wasn't for one proprietary OS only.
IMHO "granular" is the problem, not the solution. Unless of course granular can also be easy/native to the core usage pattern. Not sure why FB hasn't cracked this nut yet, but seems like EveryMe is working on getting granular right, which makes it worthy of attention.
This is a brilliant way to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem, which is probably the biggest problem a new social network is facing.
I don't want to share my kids' pictures with everyone on Facebook. And no, my mom is not going to join Google+ (nor should she), so having her receive the posts by emails for now is just brilliant.
I think the Everyme guys may be on to something.