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In July, Facebook rolled out a new “seen by” feature for groups, which let people know who has seen a post or announcement in that group, and when. And, although Facebook didn’t make much of a song and dance about it at the time, it looks like it is actually offering this feature on photos, too.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the “seen by” feature in photos works just like the “seen by” feature for other group posts: someone who posts a photo to a group can see how many people in that group have viewed it, who those people are, and what time it was that they viewed the photo. And that information is not exclusive just to the poster, either — others in the group can see who viewed a particular picture, too.

The “seen by” feature on a photo was first brought to our attention by Christo Wilson, a computer science PhD student at U.C. Santa Barbara, whose professor, Ben Zhao, was the one who first noticed it appear on a photo of his daughter that he posted to a group of users.

Zhao told TechCrunch in an email that he first noticed it on Friday. “I have a lot of friends who visit a group page we created for my baby daughter, and the first timestamp showed up last night,” he said.

I joined Zhao’s daughter’s page as well, and I could also see the names of all the users who had viewed each photo. This feature doesn’t seem to be appearing on other Facebook groups that I am in, yet.

It’s unclear whether Facebook would ever extend the “seen by” feature to photos that appear on all users’ accounts, not just those of groups.

On the one hand, Facebook has clearly been growing the number of places where people can view who has viewed their content. In May, Facebook added “seen by” details to messages between individual users and groups. Then in July, it appeared on group posts. In that context, it makes sense for it to extend to group photos, and possibly more.

Zhao notes this could be ”a phased rollout and something that will be coming for other more broader contexts as well.”

On the other hand, making something like this more widely used could be viewed as Facebook encroaching too far into how it monitors — and reports — on how the social network gets used. Photos have a more personal nature, and as Josh pointed out when Facebook launched the group “seen by” feature,

Facebook spends a lot of time fighting spam and scam hawking “profile spy apps” that would supposedly let you see who has viewed your profile. It’s repeatedly stated that no app can do this, and I’d say it’s highly unlikely to ever show who looked at photos. I mean, people might be a lot more apprehensive to browse photos, especially of romantic interests, if they knew other people could see their activity.

So much for never touching photos… But in any case, if privacy concerns and apprehension deters users from looking at photos, that would run counter to Facebook’s bigger strategy to get people using photos more, part of how it hopes to keep people engaged on its platform.

If a feature like this, which basically will tell someone when you have looked at his/her photographs, feels uncomfortable now, there may well be a time when it feels less so. Facebook could be the one to usher in that change.

As Zhao notes, it’s “just another step in the ‘Zuckering’ of our social norms, slowly eroding what most people consider to be over the line from a privacy perspective.” (In his work, Zhao happens to specialize in “large-distributed networks and systems, data mining and modeling, security and privacy, and wireless / mobile systems,” with current projects focused on “querying, modeling and mining massive graphs, analysis of social networks and online communities, and wireless systems and protocols.”)

In groups, that discomfort in any case should be less so — the picture has been sent to a group you are in, so of course you might look at it. That’s slightly different from visiting another user’s (say an ex-boyfriend’s) set of photos and browsing through them all.

And it puts Facebook more in line with Path, which also lets users know who has viewed their “moments.” That alone could be a sign of how Facebook is trying to better tailor its service for those who want to use it in these more personal, traceable ways.

We’re reaching out to Facebook about this feature and will update as we learn more.

Update: Facebook confirmed both that photos posted to groups have been included in the feature since launch, and that the “seen by” feature is only for photos that are part of a group post, not others. “We have not announced plans to extend the seen by feature to other products beyond Messenger and Groups,” the spokesperson said.

Like many parents, Dan Yang was fascinated by her young daughter’s obsession with her iPhone. As she went through the process of planning the best way to introduce her to technology, apps, and games, she quickly became frustrated with the lack of educational technology made specifically for children. Unlike most parents, however, Yang is an entrepreneur and optical engineer, so she did what any entrepreneurial, geeky mom would do: She decided to hack her own solution.

Yang developed VINCI Early Learning Systems and VINCI tablets — which she believes to be the first FDA-safety-compliant tablet that is designed purely for younguns. The learning tool, as she calls it, is itself built to develop (along with the content it includes) thinking skills, social, language, and literacy abilities, along with quantitative and logical reasoning, etc.

The tablet found an audience, and VINCI has since grown into a 50-person company. Of course, a tablet and learning tool without a supporting network or resource to supply it with content is a lonely device. So, today, the startup is announcing the release of the VINCI Kids Library, a library for kid-focused digital content and apps, including interactive stories, learning games, and over 500 titles at launch — with what Yang expects to be 1,000 titles before the end of the year.

Tailored for kids between 18 months and nine-years, the company believes it has built (and is building) the world’s largest children’s digital library. And in case that doesn’t already sound appealing to parents, the founder tells us that the library is free of not only commercials, but adult content, violence, and in-app purchases, which adds to its appeal as a safe digital learning environment for your kids.

To help fill its library with content, VINCI has partnered with recognized children’s educational content providers like TVO, The Jim Henson Company and Mightybooks.

“The Kids Library is designed to be a one-stop shop for your child’s entertainment and learning,” Yang said. “With hundreds of apps, storybooks and videos children will have access to a high-quality, safe digital library that inspires continued learning.”

Yang and company are also inviting game developers to help create apps for the Kids Library. As incentive, the company is offering hackers access to marketing opportunities, special features and announcements, and a 75 percent rev share for those qualified Android apps. Not bad.

Oh, and content is free for now, so get on it.

Kids Library at home here.

Sometimes when you do what’s best for your kids, you can go a little overboard. A mother in Pennsylvania has allegedly hacked into her children’s school records to boost their grades and browse administration emails, ABC News reports.

Catherine Venusto was employed as a secretary by the Northwestern Lehigh School District from 2008 to 2011, but she continued to use the user name and password from the superintendent to keep accessing district files. While on the district network, Venusto changed grades and read emails from nine faculty email accounts. She used the superintendent’s password 110 times.

In specific examples concerning grades, Venusto is accused of changing her daughter’s “F” to an “M” (for medical) in June 2010. She also allegedly changed her son’s “98″ to a “99″ in February 2012.

The district realized something was wrong when a teacher saw the superintendent was inside that teacher’s online grade book, but the superintendent said she was not. Administrators immediately notified local police about the misuse.

Venusto faces six third-degree felony charges for the violations. She was arraigned Wednesday on “three counts of unlawful use of a computer and three counts of computer trespassing and altering data.” If convicted, she could face a maximum of 42 years in prison or a $90,000 fine.

Photo credit: Feng Yu/Shutterstock

Filed under: offBeat, security

Twenty-five years ago today, I became a dad.

Not just that. I became the dad of a daughter.

There is nothing greater in the world than that. (Being the dad of a son comes extremely close, but daughters grow up to be adults who know how to communicate with dads on telephones on a regular basis.)

Last week when the physicists at CERN announced they had confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson or “god particle,” I was amused by the inability of anyone to explain exactly what it is, or isn’t. As I once read the Dan Brown novel, Angels and Demons, I am an expert on the topic.*

From the book, I recall the Higgs boson has something to do with being the field that holds everything in the world together. It’s everywhere there is nothing.

Okay, I’m not an expert. I have no idea what any of that means in terms of physics, but I know the feeling of discovering that thing which holds everything in the world together.

And 25 years ago, I held all 5 lbs, 8 ounces of her in my hands for the very first time.

 Correction: My wife informed me that our daughter weighed two more ounces than an earlier version included. 

*Okay, I didn’t actually read the book, but I saw Tom Hanks in that movie directed by Opie Taylor. If you like movies that feature people running around in tunnels for two hours, you should definitely check it out. 

If the car-crash Facebook IPO has sent VCs running scared and accelerators issuing warnings to their young charges then perhaps it’s time to just break out the crowd-funding campaign? Plenty of startups seem to be doing it these days, but not many get their nine-year-old daughter to front a video on their Kickstarter campaign.

Founder and CEO of Pora Ora Neil Gallagher – who put his daughter up to it – tells me he thinks the startup will “end up doing a VC round” as a result of their Kickstarter campaign. That’s clearly not guaranteed, but the campaign is having a dual effect. “We’re adding about 3,000 new users a week whether people on Kickstarter financially back us or not.” Could Kickstarter be the new marketing platform?

An educational 3D virtual online universe aimed at 5-12 year-olds, Pora Ora already has 25,000 users so it’s not as if it’s starting from scratch. And although they are asking for $100,000 (and have reached $18,109 after a few days) the Kickstarter campaign effect on the userbase is worth the risk of not raising the cash.

However, Gallagher is still aiming to raise a VC round to develop more gaming features and apps including a coding game and tools to enable children to create their own worlds.

Created by holding company Caped Koala Studios, Pora Ora features games, puzzles and quests geared to a global school curriculum. Children learn through their avatar whilst exploring the worlds of Pora Ora alongside their Pora Pal (virtual pet) who needs wisdom, creativity and exploration points to keep them healthy and happy.

And in contrast to the issues recently experienced by Habbo Hotel, the game has strong security settings where children must complete an eSafety quest and gain parental permission to access the interactive features. Pora Ora can also be set to “school mode”, which lets teachers use the game in the classroom. Teachers and parents can then control the safety features, track the child’s progress and offer in-game rewards through the parental controls.

There is a lot of interest in teens these days. That’s not so special because there is always interest in teens. Of course most of that interest is self-generated. No one is more interested in teens than themselves which, in this ‘me, me, I, I’ social media world we live in, only enhances the already natural ability to focus on themselves with incredible intensity (I know from which I speak having a 15 yr. old daughter so don’t think I am writing in a vacuum here).

The folks at Common Sense Media put together an infographic from data collected in their report ‘Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives’. It’s an interesting look especially for marketers because teens today are growing up with social media as the norm vs. something you learn. That makes them very different and important to keep an eye on for the future.

What I picked up on was the desire to disconnect. This will be very important to marketers because this group will likely have some increased level of burn out around social media. Many adults are finding it to be too much and some of the expressed desires of teens to have different types of relationships from indicate that more may follow with time. With 43% of those questioned sometimes wanting to unplug and then 21% wanting their parents to as well, there is something happening.

How are you viewing the next generation of adult consumers? Are you adjusting your approach to meet their unique situation directly or are you going to try to make them conform to how ‘it’s done in the real world’? Good luck trying to force fit them. If you think they will fall right in line you may want to think again. Remember the part about me having a 15 yr. old? It’s real and, as marketers, you better prepare for it.

You have been warned.

Joey Nelson, an app developer from Arkansas, is reaching out to users through his app to help name his baby girl.  Joey and cofounders Matt Hudson and John James, of MobileFWD, launched their trivia game app, Trivi.al, last week and new users may be surprised to find a question thrown in to the trivia mix asking what Joey should name his soon-to-be-born daughter.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the US and north of the Equator, we’re heading into summer. My daughter, age 10, sighed into the phone yesterday morning, “Dad, can you believe I won’t have school for three MONTHS? I told her that maybe this was the start of many adventures, and a great way to mark off some new projects to undertake. And then later, I realized that this was good advice to me. So, I thought I’d share a “summer diet” of sorts for you to think about, as well.

A Summer Diet

• I will consume only two types of books this summer: those that enhance my business capabilities, and those that thrill me personally.

• I will only read the blogs of a few friends, unless someone I trust sends me something I “must” see.
• I will allow 3o minutes for email a day, and 30 minutes for social networking a day. Period.
• I will produce 3 blog posts a week, 1 newsletter a week, 1 audio post (minimum) a week, and 1 video show a week (minimum).
• I will complete and make available one new content project a week.
• I will not do interviews or guest media for the rest of the summer (except what I’ve already accepted).
• I will launch my next conference event.
• I will revitalize the strategies of several new clients and previous clients.
• I will free up at least two hours a day all summer long to act on my life goals and interests.
• I will set and attain measurable business goals for every week of the summer.
• I will enter the ocean or a lake once a week (at minimum). It’s summer!

The point in writing all this down is so that you might stir your own thoughts up and think, “What might I do over the next few months that jars me to think differently? How might I revisit my business? How can I not squander time, but still value and acknowledge the change of season? And finally, it’s a way of pointing out (to myself) where I might be wasting my time, and writing the potential positive version of that perspective into a list.

And You?

What might you add or subtract this summer? What business or personal interests will you change up? And if you’re heading into winter, what mental differences do you think exist between what I’ve written and how you’re perceiving the next few months?

My daughter, Violette, is 10 years old today. I’m not with her right now to celebrate, because I’m up in Canada, but we celebrated a bit early. But today is the big day, and I wanted to mark it.

The best parts of knowing Violette is that she is a very accomplished manga artist. She is very funny. Her sense of humor is equal parts sublime like a British comic and also outrageous like Andy Kaufman. She is a daring foodie, and eats all kinds of interesting and fun things like sushi and vegetables, and all kinds of foods I don’t predict many 10-year-olds are into.

She loves reading and reads very fast. I’ve seen her finish a book and a half in a single day, and I’m talking chapter books here.

Violette, when you get to be 18, I hope you look back and think about the good stuff, the bad stuff, the weird stuff of this year and your 10 years so far, and realize that you are loved, that you have a voice in the process, and that you’re going to do and be so much on this planet. I love you.