I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community. I bet if you looked you would have found something similar about Twitter at some point where social media savvy people were going "WTF? I've used it forever"
What is fascinating to me is how quickly dropbox spread outside the HN demographic. My 70 year old mother, who was as far from a techical user as one could be, asked me in early 2009 if I used dropbox so she could share some photos with me. That's when I realized they were really on to something. It was just that easy to use, and it was spreading very rapidly in non-technical communities - they had reached a user like my mother within 6 months of public release. Unbelievable, and a real testament to the simplicity and elegance of the product.
I'm biased because I write for Fortune Magazine, but you put this perfectly. To prove your point, when I wrote about Twitter in Fortune in August, 2008, which was one of the first general business press articles about Twitter, I was well aware that 1) all the cool kids knew about it and 2) the rest of the country, Fortune's readers, did not. Here is that article, which seems a little quaint now: http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/06/technology/true_meaning_of_t...
Spot on. I am incredibly optimistic about Dropbox's future. It constantly blows my mind that home users don't have any file sharing running on their network. The go-to solution is to email files to each other, even while sitting on the same network. When I learned that Dropbox supported LAN sync, I immediately started recommending it as an alternative to emailing files back and forth. Just drop files you would normally email to each other in to the Dropbox folder, and magically it will appear on the other computer. BONUS! If you make changes, they're automatically shared in the other direction. Keep it under 2 GB and you get this for free.
The response I get from users is consistently that of complete astonishment. Registering for and installing Dropbox is, for many people, a more straight forward process than getting file sharing working. Dropbox scratches a very common itch.
Of course it is. My bigger surprise is that it doesn't feature what I now think of as the ultimate Dropbox evangelising line: "It's a folder. That syncs".
There's this tunnel vision that propagates in highly specialized communities like HN. Stepping back and viewing things from the bigger picture is a skill that is highly underrated.
That being said, from my personal observations, Dropbox is knocking on the door and about to have a push outside of the core tech community. This article is just another sign that Dropbox is about to make a big push.
I agree, this will be big for dropbox and they deserve the acknowledgement. However I think a lot of us here feel the same way, which you can deem as somewhat childish. Its the sentiment "we were here first".
Dropbox wasn't the first such product and you can argue better ones exist out there. What they have done is make a product with little or no friction to get up and running across multiple devices. That is the power of their product. It is super easy to use and difficult to break. A lot of companies can learn from their success and focus on user experience.
My Son's elementary school principal sends the PTA newsletter out via email with a link to it in his Dropbox. He couldn't figure out how to attach it to the email. I think Dropbox may be a bit more well known outside of the "techie" crowd more than you think.
I've been shocked at how often I see the Dropbox icon on friend's systems. I no longer live in silicon valley, and so I am completely out of the echo chamber (except what I read here at HN). These are not nerds, not techies, and not people who follow TechCrunch. These are artists, musicians, old folks, nomads, and all sorts of folks that just don't do technology. But, they get Dropbox. Admittedly, my parents aren't using Dropbox, but my parents don't read CNN.com, either, and I can't imagine what they would even use Dropbox for. I can't even get them to use flickr for photos, despite buying them a digital camera (my mom still uses a film camera when she travels because she's afraid she'll lose or break the digital one).
If I could invest in Dropbox, I would. But, that wasn't always true. I met Drew at a YC party before they had anything to show, and were still figuring out the diffing/versioning problems, and all the underlying hard problems. And, I came away thinking, "Well, that's been done before. A lot. And it never went anywhere." I had even built a little web-based file manager and sharing app as a RoR practice app, a couple weeks before. So, I thought I knew a business that wouldn't go anywhere when I saw it. I thought highly of Drew, but not much of the idea. I was obviously very wrong about the idea.
Anyway, my point is, Dropbox hasn't been something "you've never heard of" for quite some time.
>> "...And there's little to stop...Amazon (AMZN), with its own Amazon Web Services, from making a greater push into Dropbox's territory...."
Dropbox actually runs on AWS by using Amazon's S3 for storage. This is what allowed them to get up and running quickly and cheaply without needing a lot of venture funding.
I would not be surprised with Dropbox's continued growth, if they in the future were to set up and manage their own data centers to avoid being dependent on Amazon or anyone else's platform. This would be advantageous if Amazon were to decide to compete directly with a similar product.
Someone questioned whether Dropbox could compete with Amazon at scale, but decided to delete it. This is a really valid question. I recalled a while back that Backblaze asked a similar question and came up with a really cool solution.
I see this as Dropbox's future. PaaS is good for getting started, but with numbers like what's shown in that blog post, it's hard to argue that something like S3 is really priced at commodity levels.
This same line of reasoning came up with the last few Netflix stories to hit HN. Netflix depends on Amazon who runs a competing on-demand video service. The general consensus is that Amazon's divisions are independent enough to not try anything funny. More importantly, Amazon is big enough that they wouldn't risk the publicity fallout of monkeying with the competition's services.
counterpoint: Dropbox is a great product, clever tech, insightful marketing etc. Even the YC application was great. And I think there's a large market (even its present size is more than enough to sate my own avarice), but... it doesn't seem that it could become a truly huge company (like Xerox, Google), without launching a series of increasingly unrelated products. Though perhaps that's true of many huge companies (e.g. Apple, Sony, HP - even Microsoft has Office).
When we were trying to figure out if Dropbox would be a good sync tool for Leanpub, Peter went in to a local coffee shop and asked a bunch of people if they'd ever heard of Dropbox. All of the baristas and everyone else in their 20s had, and had accounts. About half of the people 30 or older had heard of it, and most of them had accounts.
We were pretty impressed with the numbers, and we ended up going with Dropbox, and we've never regretted it.
My mom came to me earlier asking me to help her install Dropbox. She's about as informed about computer stuff as i am about fashion. That's a good sign for Dropbox :-)
While I'm sure Dropbox has their work cut out, you know they are onto something when you run into their flyers outside college dorms cross country in Chapel Hill, NC.
Today I was at a University small business lecture. Someone asked one of the entrepreneurs "What was your biggest mistake?". The guy said his laptop had been stolen, but luckily it was all auto-backed up onto Dropbox. A nice anecdote and good press!
I love dropbox and we use it personally and for our company (we are paid subscribers). But it seems to me that this space has fewer barriers to entry than say Groupon. People argue that Groupon has little barriers to entry but the fact is that it cost a lot to sell and get merchants on board. Dropbox is a very unique and helpful product but what will stop the competition from creating something similar and possibly better?
Now is maybe the really scary time for Dropbox - here come the "me too's" including corporates who will say "Hey looks like people are starting to want this file storage and sharing thingy" - we can do that too and offer it to our own customers.
I had the same thought as SwellJoe around early 2008: That's been done, it ain't gonna go anywhere big. Obviously failed prediction on my part.
So the question is, what made Dropbox successful? There are plenty of players in this area (some of them are older than dropbox): box.net, mozy.com, Windows Live mesh, backblaze.
Furthermore, techies can easily do backup to their own S3 account, but they love Dropbox.
What's the success factors? YC? Being MIT graduates? The clever "Tell your friends and get more space for free" email? The market is just HUGE?
I like Dropbox but i use it less often. What i am waiting for is the same solution from Apple. Their cloud facility has been just finished and they will probably offer similar service not later than this year. It might not start as pure storage facility but will start by account and device activation from cloud, iphoto & music backup and then after figuring out how this cloud thing work will probably offer similar subscription fee based service. After all why they still didn't buy Dropbox? Probably they are working on it.
I'm glad the article pointed out the cartoon dinosaur riding a shark on the jobs page, even though they mistook it as not taking things seriously, instead of convincingly signalling, by the fact of its nature and presence (as an awesome and surprising drawing on a recruitment page that's subversive of conventional expectations for a potential employer), the claim made in the heading on that page, that Dropbox is a pretty sweet place to work.
[+] [-] 51Cards|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
With this line they are streets ahead of most pure tech sites in terms of accuracy.
[+] [-] pge|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamlashinsky|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradleyland|15 years ago|reply
The response I get from users is consistently that of complete astonishment. Registering for and installing Dropbox is, for many people, a more straight forward process than getting file sharing working. Dropbox scratches a very common itch.
[+] [-] frossie|15 years ago|reply
Of course it is. My bigger surprise is that it doesn't feature what I now think of as the ultimate Dropbox evangelising line: "It's a folder. That syncs".
[ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153046 ]
[+] [-] nchlswu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taylorbuley|15 years ago|reply
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0628/technology-file-shari...
[+] [-] niels|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chuhnk|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luca-giovanni|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darrenkopp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saidulislam|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwellJoe|15 years ago|reply
If I could invest in Dropbox, I would. But, that wasn't always true. I met Drew at a YC party before they had anything to show, and were still figuring out the diffing/versioning problems, and all the underlying hard problems. And, I came away thinking, "Well, that's been done before. A lot. And it never went anywhere." I had even built a little web-based file manager and sharing app as a RoR practice app, a couple weeks before. So, I thought I knew a business that wouldn't go anywhere when I saw it. I thought highly of Drew, but not much of the idea. I was obviously very wrong about the idea.
Anyway, my point is, Dropbox hasn't been something "you've never heard of" for quite some time.
[+] [-] daeken|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krschultz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayvega|15 years ago|reply
Dropbox actually runs on AWS by using Amazon's S3 for storage. This is what allowed them to get up and running quickly and cheaply without needing a lot of venture funding.
I would not be surprised with Dropbox's continued growth, if they in the future were to set up and manage their own data centers to avoid being dependent on Amazon or anyone else's platform. This would be advantageous if Amazon were to decide to compete directly with a similar product.
[+] [-] bradleyland|15 years ago|reply
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-h...
I see this as Dropbox's future. PaaS is good for getting started, but with numbers like what's shown in that blog post, it's hard to argue that something like S3 is really priced at commodity levels.
[+] [-] mxavier|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 6ren|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lemon_pie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakkhi|15 years ago|reply
If they get fees from these apps when they monetise they become a platform or a framework, then the sky is the limit
App directory: https://www.dropbox.com/apps
[+] [-] spatten|15 years ago|reply
We were pretty impressed with the numbers, and we ended up going with Dropbox, and we've never regretted it.
[+] [-] technomancy|15 years ago|reply
I wish this were true; unfortunately I hear lots and lots about them when they run a "spam your friends for more free space" promotional.
[+] [-] jrockway|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Tomek_|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaidf|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tom_b|15 years ago|reply
If it wasn't a HIPPA issue, we might be using Dropbox for more internal projects here
Love, love, love dropbox. You undergrad at Sitterson?
[+] [-] zandorg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jprobert|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeag|15 years ago|reply
Should be interesting.
[+] [-] DufusM|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] didip|15 years ago|reply
I had the same thought as SwellJoe around early 2008: That's been done, it ain't gonna go anywhere big. Obviously failed prediction on my part.
So the question is, what made Dropbox successful? There are plenty of players in this area (some of them are older than dropbox): box.net, mozy.com, Windows Live mesh, backblaze.
Furthermore, techies can easily do backup to their own S3 account, but they love Dropbox.
What's the success factors? YC? Being MIT graduates? The clever "Tell your friends and get more space for free" email? The market is just HUGE?
I know that 1 of them is using Python. =)
[+] [-] orionlogic|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ubercore|15 years ago|reply