1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for sharing data among users. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for sharing and synchronizing data across users of cloud computing systems.
2. Related Art
Network-enabled users commonly use cloud computing systems to store, manage, and/or synchronize data. For example, a user may store images, audio, video, documents, and/or other files on an electronic device such as a laptop computer, personal computer, tablet computer, mobile phone, and/or portable media player. The user may also have a user account with a cloud computing system that allows copies of the files to be stored and/or backed up at the cloud computing system. The cloud computing system may additionally transmit the copies to other electronic devices of the user, thus synchronizing the data across the users' devices and with the user account.
However, automatic synchronization and/or sharing of data are typically unavailable between users and/or user accounts of cloud computing systems. Instead, a user may share data with another user using conventional digital communication mechanisms, which may require manual setup and/or configuration by the user. For example, the user may share a photo album with the other user by uploading the photo album to the user's user account with a photo-sharing site and sending a link to the photo album to the other user via email, instant message, and/or text message. The other user may then access the photo album by directing a web browser to the link. As a result, the user may be required to select the appropriate link to the photo album and address the email, instant message, and/or text message to the other user to successfully share the photo album with the other user. Alternatively, the user may upload the photo album to a remote directory with the cloud computing system and manually grant access to the remote directory for the other user. However, sharing of the photo album through the cloud computing system may not work if the user uploads the photo to the wrong directory, shares the wrong directory with the other user, and/or shares the correct directory with the wrong user. Consequently, existing techniques for sharing and/or synchronizing data between users may be tedious, confusing, error-prone, and/or time-consuming for the users.