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- With The 'Fortnite' On Switch Debacle, Microsoft Played Sony Hard
- Apple is making it harder for police to collect evidence from iPhones of suspected criminals
- Snapchat launches privacy-safe Snap Kit, the un-Facebook platform
| With The 'Fortnite' On Switch Debacle, Microsoft Played Sony Hard Posted: 14 Jun 2018 07:38 AM PDT  The big stories out of E3 have coalesced: From Software is making a ninja game, Cyberpunk 2077 looks amazing, Fortnite is out on Nintendo Switch and Sony in a world of hurt. For two days now, the PlayStation 4 manufacturer has been under fire for some restrictionist policies very similar to those that it mocked Microsoft for adopting at the launch of the Xbox One, and it's a big enough problem that it could be affecting share prices. The company decided not only to bar Fortnite cross-play between the Nintendo Switch and the PS4, but also to lock any Fortnite account that had ever been linked to a PSN account out of the Nintendo Switch. People who own both a Switch and a PS4 are not happy about it. The company's response has been received and found lacking. On its own, its bad for Sony. In the wider context, it's worse. The Fortnite debacle wouldn't truly be Sony's loss unless it was also Microsoft's victory, and that's what makes this so interesting. Microsoft has been staking its poistion in this cross-play battle for a little while now. At first, it may have been a strategy borne out of necessity: Xbox One, and thus Xbox Live, had far fewer players than PS4 and PSN, and so Microsoft turned to the massive pool of players on PC in order to bolster those numbers. And it was an effective strategy because it's ultimately about giving the player more options, and the player likes more options. Microsoft weaponized the idea at GDC 2016 with an invitation/dare for "other networks" to offer cross-platform play, putting Sony in a lose/lose position. The company could either cede its competitive network advantage or come off looking like stubborn restrictionists, and it chose the latter. It didn't matter too much until the Switch came along. Before the Switch, it was just Microsoft and Sony and nobody much expected them to play nice, but when the Switch launched it became all other consoles vs. the PS4, and that's a different narrative particularly in the wake of the Switch's success. PSN no longer had the largest network, not by a longshot: the largest network belonged to a combination of PC, Switch, Xbox and, occasionally, mobile. Games like Rocket League and Minecraft allowed Xbox and Switch players to play together, increasingly making Sony's objections look a whole lot more like business decisions and less like the security or technical reasons put forward. This story has bubbled for a while, but Fortnite and Epic Games make up the perfect catalyst to make it boil over. Epic, as the makers of the Unreal Engine, are all about the idea that a developer can make one game for every platform, and it baked that idea into Fortnite from day one. With Fortnite, gamers expect to be able to port their progression over to different devices and play with their friends on different platforms. The game is now popular enough to start driving industry trends on its own, and its gone a long way toward making cross-platform capabilities an expectation rather than a nice bonus. Microsoft was in the perfect spot to take advantage of this, but Sony had already entrenched itself in an unpopular position. Sony's E3 this year was all about the present: it took a victory lap with already-revealed but much-anticipated exclusives. Microsoft's didn't have a whole lot for the gamers of 2018 or 2019, but it subtly pointed our view towards the next generation, when things might just well be different. And if Sony can't walk back this problem it's developed, Xbox is going to have a much stronger argument next generation as the console that allows you to play with whoever you want. |
| Apple is making it harder for police to collect evidence from iPhones of suspected criminals Posted: 14 Jun 2018 06:58 AM PDT Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. |
| Snapchat launches privacy-safe Snap Kit, the un-Facebook platform Posted: 14 Jun 2018 06:02 AM PDT Today Snapchat finally gets a true developer platform, confirming TechCrunch’s scoop from last month about Snap Kit. This set of APIs lets other apps piggyback on Snap’s login for sign up, build Bitmoji avatars into their keyboards, display public Our Stories and Snap Map content, and generate branded stickers with referral links users can share back inside Snapchat. </span> Snap Kit’s big selling point is privacy — a differentiator from Facebook. It doesn’t even let you share your social graph with apps to prevent a Cambridge Analytica-style scandal. Launch partners include Tinder bringing Bitmojis to your chats with matches, Patreon letting fans watch creators’ Stories from within its app, and Postmates offering order ETA stickers you can share in Snapchat that open the restaurant’s page in the delivery app. Developers that want to join the platform can sign up here.
Snap Kit could help the stumbling public company colonize the mobile app ecosystem with its buttons and content, which might inspire Snapchat signups from new users and reengagement from old ones. “Growth is one of our three goals for 2018, so we absolutely hope it can contribute to that, and continue to strengthen engagement, which has always been a key metric for us” Snap’s VP of product Jacob Andreou tells me. That’s critical since Snapchat sunk to its lowest user growth rate ever last quarter under the weight of competition from Instagram and WhatsApp. “There have been areas inside of our products where we’ve really set standards” Andreou explains. “Early, that was seen in examples like Stories, but today with things like how we treat user data, what we collect, what we share when people login and register for our service . . . Snap Kit is a set of developer tools that really allow people to take the best parts of our products and the standards that we’ve set in a few of these areas, and bring them into their apps.”
“It really became challenging for us to see our users then use other products throughout their day and have to lower their expectations. . . having to be okay with the fact that all of their information and data would be shared” Andreou gripes. This messaging is a stark turnaround from four years ago when it took 10 days for CEO Evan Spiegel to apologize for security laziness causing the leak of 4 million users’ phone numbers. But now with Facebook as everyone’s favorite privacy punching bag, Snapchat is seizing the PR opportunity. “I think one of the parts that [Spiegel] was really excited about with this release is how much better our approach to our users in that way really is — without relying on things like policy or developer’s best intentions or them writing perfect bug free code, but instead by design, not even exposing these things to begin with.”
Yet judging by Facebook’s continued growth and recovered share price, privacy is too abstract of a concept for many people to grasp. Snap Kit will have to win on the merits of what it brings other apps, and the strength of its partnerships team. Done right, Snapchat could gain an army of allies to battle the blue menace. Snapvengers AssembleSnap’s desire to maintain an iron grip on its ‘cool’ brand has kept its work with developers minimal until now. Its first accidental brush with a developer platform was actually a massive security hazard.
2017 saw Snap cautiously extend the drawbridge, inviting in ads, analytics, and marketing developer partners to help brands be hip, and letting hacker/designers make their own AR lenses. But the real transition moment was when Spiegel said on the Q4 2017 earnings call that “We feel strongly that Snapchat should not be confined to our mobile application—the amazing Snaps created by our community deserve wider distribution so they can be enjoyed by everyone.” At the time that meant Snaps on the web, embedded in news sites, and on Jumbotrons. Today it means in other apps. But Snap will avoid one of the key pitfalls of the Facebook platform: over-promising. Snap Deputy General Counsel for Privacy Katherine Tassi tells me “It was also very important to us that there wasn’t going to be the exchange of the friends graph as part of the value proposition to third party developers.” How Snap Kit WorksSnap Kit breaks down to four core pieces of functionality that will appeal to different apps looking to simplify signup, make communication visual, host eye-catching content, or score referral traffic. Developers that want access to Snap Kit must pass a human review and approval process. Snap will review their functionality to ensure they’re not doing anything shady.
Once authorized, they’ll have access to these APIs:
One thing that’s not in Snap Kit, at least yet, is the ability to embed Snapchat’s whole software camera into other apps which TechCrunch erroneously reported. Our sources mistakenly confused Creative Kit’s ability to generate stickers as opposed to sharing whole stories, which Andreou called “an interesting first step” for making Snapchat the broadcast channel for other apps. Additional launch partners include bringing Bitmoji to Quip’s word processor, RSVP stickers from Eventbrite, GIF-enhanced Stories search in Giphy, Stories from touring musicians in Bands In Town, storytelling about your dinner reservation on Quandoo, music discovery sharing from SoundHound, and real-time sports score sharing from ScoreStream. While other platforms have escaped their host’s control, like Facebook’s viral game spam outbreak in 2009 or Twitter having to shut down errant clients, Snapchat’s approval process will let it direct the destiny of its integrations.  Bitmoji Kit in Tinder When asked why Snapchat was building Snap Kit, Andreou explained that “We think that giving people more tools to be able to express themselves freely, have fun and be creative, both on Snapchat and other apps is a good thing. We also think that helping more people outside of Snapchat learn about our platform and our features is a good thing. And most importantly, being able to do this in a way that doesn’t compromise our users’ privacy is very good thing.” Without much data sharing, there’s a lot less risk here for Snapchat. But the platform won’t have the same draw that Facebook can dangle with its massive user base and extensive personal info access. Instead, Snapchat will have to leverage the fear of being left out of the visual communication era and tout itself as the catalyst for apps to evolve. The biggest driver of the platform might be youngins demanding their Bitmoji everywhere. Snap needs all the help it can get right now. If other apps are willing to be a billboard for it in exchange for some of its teen-approved functionality, Snapchat could find new growth channels amidst stiff competition. Platforms can entrench apps. And after its user count shrunk in March, Snap has to find a way to keep from disappearing |
This focus on privacy manifests as a limit of 90 days of inactivity before your connection with an app is severed. And the login feature only requires you bring along your changeable Snapchat display name, and optionally, your Bitmoji. Snap Kit apps can’t even ask for your email, phone number, gender, age, location, who you follow, or who you’re friends with.
Third-party apps promising a method to secretly screenshot messages asked users to login with their Snapchat usernames and passwords, then proceeded to get hacked, exposing some users’ risqué photos. Snap later cut off an innocent music video app called Mindie for finding a way to share to users’ Stories. Last year I wrote how 
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