How to see who is Sharing our comics

michaelgolden3 2015-04-27 14:18:39 UTC #6

Oh for the love of ... WHY??? Even if we get told what Tapastic user shared our page and where, as long as you have your privacy settings set right on Facebook, we couldn't even SEE your FB page. All we would know is where you shared it. And I don't think it's unreasonable at all to know where my copyrighted material is being shared. WHY are you sharing my work on your Facebook page and yet are afraid I will see it??? This is EXACTLY why I want to know where my page is being shared.

Jelw 2015-04-27 14:34:46 UTC #7

That's why I said statistics for it would be fine. Knowing where your comic is circulating is important. (3 to twitter… 5 to FB etc) However wanting to see which users are sharing and where? Kinda unsettling.
Besides, how as a creator is it more helpful to know exactly who is sharing it as opposed to knowing other specifics with the anonymity still in tact?

michaelgolden3 2015-04-27 14:50:59 UTC #8

To be honest, I don't know why you think you deserve privacy when you're sharing MY copyrighted material. I want whatever Tapastic will give me, which right now is nothing. I would take anything more than nothing, but if truth be told, yeah, I ought to be able to see who you are, what you said, and where you shared it. Because it's my comic, and that's how sharing works. Anonymous sharing is for trolls, not fans. There's way to much uncredited rebroadcasting of other people's material on the Internet in general, and uncredited rebroadcasting takes money out of creators pockets. I have a right to know where you share my stuff because every time someone shares, SOMEONE is making money off my comic and it's not me.

shinepaw 2015-04-27 15:03:13 UTC #9

Uh, why would anyone make money of Sharing a comic through Tapastic? o.o Even if it's shared on Facebook and such it'll only be a link to your comic on Tapastic, so you still get that traffic. And if you want to see where people repost it without using the Share button then Tapastic can't help in that case.

But I agree with showing statistics, I'd love to see if my comic got shared on Facebook or such But I don't see why it would be useful if wee see who shared it exactly. Also you can share it as well on your FB, Twitter, etc... to gain new followers, or even in groups, there are lots of FB groups where you can share your comic. That way you can even see others opinions first hand.

AnnaLandin 2015-04-27 15:06:10 UTC #10

@michaelgolden3 Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't using Tapastic's Share-function mean that you automatically credit the creator? I mean, the sharing-link does lead back directly to your Tapastic-page, correct? And since all the traffic is directed through your Tapastic-page, it means that any advertising money would go to you, if you signed up for the Ad Revenue program.

As for the argument re: privacy - while I on the one hand can sympathise with @Jelw (IMHO, it's kind of creepy how everything we do online is being monitored by someone, whether that be a specific creator of a comic, or Google's gathering of our search-results), I find that since we can see who liked the page, extending that right to see who shared it isn't that big a step. I'm not sure it's a step Tapastic should take, but the difference isn't that huge, especially since the list of who liked a page is made public to all Tapastic-users.

But yeah. I'm undecided on this issue.

Jelw 2015-04-27 15:06:57 UTC #11

A share is not uncredited. If you've shared something it is no more than a link + thumbnail at most which leads directly to the taptastic comic. (Although I've only personally shared through Facebook and text messaging programs so someone feel free to let me know if other sites are different)
When someone shares something through the share function it's only promoting the comic and helping the creator.
What you're referring to is reposting which is an entirely seperate (and very wrong) matter.

shinepaw 2015-04-27 15:12:59 UTC #12

Just adding to that, nobody can see who liked a certain page of a comic, only the creator, what everybody can see is who subscribed to which comic. I had a problem with that when I wanted to have a giveaway since even I can't see all the people who liked an episode of mine >_<

Also other Social media pages can be quite personal, for example you can't say to FB not to show your profile picture, it's always visible to everyone, and some people might not like that the artist or Tapastic sees their picture. For example.

Jelw 2015-04-27 15:16:36 UTC #13

Yeah your point in general pinpoints what issues I have. It's less a problem I see with tapastic, and more with most social media sites function now a days which have made me generally apprehensive.

If the option to know who shared your comic was available I would prefer it just let you see what users shared it with no further information. However, I don't see that being particularly useful information and think statistics with anonymity would be better therefore.

AnnaLandin 2015-04-27 15:27:49 UTC #14

@shinepaw - Seriously? Because I just had a look at the latest update of a comic I'm subscribed to, and I could see that another user had liked the page, with their user-icon and everything. Is that because I'm subscribed to the comic?

shinepaw 2015-04-27 15:33:26 UTC #15

It's only the last five I believe, and no more. At least I have episodes where I got 200 likes and still only see the last five, and haven't found a way to see all of them o.o

And now for some reason it won't let me reply o.o
Edit: got through finally >_<

michaelgolden3 2015-04-27 16:34:56 UTC #16

True. But shares CAN be accompanied by comments like "this guy sucks" which is something I'd like to know about. We hope it is, but sharing isn't necessarily positive. And everyone says that, as creators, we are supposed to be building a dialogue with our fans. How can I build a dialogue with those people if I don't know who they are?

michaelgolden3 2015-04-27 16:38:33 UTC #17

Because that's how click bait works. You see a page with the share, but you're also looking at their ads. And their advertisers pay them for that. But the creator gets nothing. It's not a huge deal, I guess. But I feel like I'm creating a product that maybe people are using to make money, and if that's the case I ought to at least KNOW about it.

michaelson 2015-04-27 17:55:47 UTC #18

We are going to make the ability to see who liked your comic more visible for the creators to monitor in the future. Right now, all forward facing statistics i.e. likes, and shares are kept relatively hidden due to privacy concerns as we don't want to discourage anyone from taking those actions.

As @jelw mentioned prior, there are a lot of readers and creators who feel uncomfortable with certain aspects of sharing being visible.

The aforementioned ability to see who liked your comic being more visible will live on the new creator dashboard that is being built. We would also like to integrate better statistics regarding where your comic is shared (i.e. if an episode has 7 shares, then we would be able to showcase how many were on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc).

Currently, the Facebook api that we're using to count the share function doesn't only track the number of shares directly from the episode page but also track the number of times it's re-shared on Facebook internally. There are other technicalities with counting shares that we'll have to work out before fully integrating this feature for creators, I hope you understand - we really want to build this out.

SpavVy 2015-04-27 18:10:57 UTC #19

I've been wanting this option for a while now, I'd like to see who is sharing my comic and where it's being shared, especially WHAT is being said about it.

michaelgolden3 2015-04-27 18:22:30 UTC #20

Thanks for the update. I'm looking forward to seeing the changes.

Jelw 2015-04-27 22:50:52 UTC #21

In my experience, those who tend to dislike something online enough to share someone's work and diss it, are generally not the types to be silent to the creators themself too. Generally they're the type of person to seek attention and recognition with their hatred.
Besides, being paranoid about haters and trolls isn't going to get you anywhere.

bmacbride 2015-04-28 21:13:57 UTC #22

On a related note, does Tapastic notify creators when their comics are featured on the front page or in a collection? I often get dramatic spikes in my traffic at times when I have not recently updated, and the only good explanation I can come up with for 100+ views/subs/likes/whatever in a day is that I was featured, but I've never been notified or emailed. An automated email when I got featured would be fine, but I want to know where my traffic is coming from, even if it's from Tapastic itself.

brianorlando 2015-04-28 23:40:03 UTC #23

We totally want to do this. This is something that we've all talked about and are planning to include it in a future update.

raymundnell 2015-04-29 09:02:16 UTC #24

Yeah, I have a question. Is it counted when other people share an already shared post of the comic outside tapastic? Or only the direct shares from tapastic are the only ones counted?

I have this one episode that has 1.2k shares which is very surprising because my next highest shared episode is 200 shares. Look at this picture.

I only have 183 subscribers in this series.

I'm actually happy with the number but I just don't understand. Maybe it was featured? But the view count is quite normal compared to the other episodes. Or maybe it's a technical error?

just curious..... @michaelson (I hope you don't mind me tagging you ^v^)

purrlpankras 2015-04-29 15:26:02 UTC #25

Would be great if they even shared my stuff. //shot