
Dropbox (YC S08) Now Effortlessly Syncing Files For 1 Million Members - immad
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/24/dropbox-now-effortlessly-syncing-files-for-1-million-members/
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huhtenberg
I know that Dropbox is a darling of HN, but I just can't help but point out
the following.

As someone how developed and grew (somewhat) similar service to 3 million
users, I am guessing there's a _lot_ of abandoned and idle accounts in this
million. Anywhere between 75% and 95%.

But even if they are actively synch'ing files for just 100K users instead of a
million, it is still a pretty big achievement. Also the growth of the active
users tends to follow the curve of the cumulative number, so the exponent
nature of it is quite impressive as well. It would help to keep the title of
the PR bit factual though, especially when it's geared towards the technical
community. As they are _not_ synch'ing files for 1 million users.

~~~
albertni
You're right that accounts are abandoned or go idle. It's substantially less
than 75% though =)

Also, well over 100K users actively sync a file each and every day.

~~~
scorpion032
So, if you define 'active user' as the user who did a file sync today, 10% of
your users are active users?

~~~
albertni
I think your question is phrased in a somewhat misleading way. For starters, I
gave 10% as a loose lower bound, not as the actual number. More importantly,
the question implies that a user is active _if and only if he/she syncs a file
today_.

There are a variety of things that can be used to define "active user".
Logically, the point of defining "active user" is to differentiate between
users who have a good chance of using a product/service again or on a regular
basis or something like that (depends on the nature of your service), and
users who almost certainly won't and are just taking up space in your user
registry (or in our case, space on our servers as well). I won't go into any
further details, but the number of people who do a file sync at least once a
week is much higher than the number of people who do a file sync every day,
and the number of people who do a file sync at least once a month is much
higher than that. In addition, there are people who don't add or edit new
files very often, but do frequently access their existing files, who aren't
being counted in the approximate numbers I gave above. Anyway, going off of
this qualitative "definition" of activity, I consider much, much more than 10%
of our users to be active users.

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ja27
I like dropbox a lot, but have two problems.

The major one is that their price point just seems too high. $99 a year just
isn't a price that I'm willing to pay without seriously considering the value
I'm getting. (Then when I consider the value, $99 can buy a pretty big
portable hard drive or flash drive. So I buy the drives and just use the free
2 gig Dropbox for synchronizing smaller files.)

On the other hand, I had no problem paying $30/year for Flickr Pro. That's an
easy price point, even for a cheap bastard like me.

The minor one is that they don't seem to own dropbox.com. I don't know how
that didn't get done before settling on the name, but they gotta get that
cleared up.

~~~
frossie
Yeah, it's not the $99 that is the problem, it is that it buys you 50GB. The
most valuable digital data I have is baby/kid photos, video etc. They are
truly irreplaceable (to me, anyway), and I wouldn't mind some convenient way
to do off-site backup rather than lugging rsynced disks around, but 50GB is
not enough to back it up.

As for syncing and sharing project files, that is what the git repository is
for.

But quite obviously there is a market for what they sell. I'm just not in that
market. Not until I can get half a TB for my $99, anyway.

~~~
ja27
I have the same problem. I have almost 100 gigs of photos which are the
majority of my backup needs.

Flickr's been an somewhat easy way to back them up and share them at the same
time. But I have growing frustration with Flickr because I'm really using it
for three different purposes now: backing up all my photos, sharing family
snapshots with friends and family, and sharing more artsy photography with
mostly strangers (which is really Flickr's sweet spot).

Using Flickr for backup is incredibly annoying and iffy because their
uploaders are so fragile and downloading the entire collection depends on
third-party software that Flickr could break or disable at any moment.

I'd love to move my photo backups off of Flickr and am close to using just
some rotating USB hard drives, but I'd much rather have something automated.
Dropbox could definitely have my business there and be price competitive if
they offered say 250 gigs for under $100 a year. Backing up my photos should
be a good profit for them over time, because once I get past the initial
backup, I really only upload a gig or two a month and rarely download. Unlike
my other documents, I don't need my photo backup replicated between my
different computers running Dropbox.

Sharing photos with friends and family is something that Dropbox could be good
at or at least acceptable. The Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook uploaders all suck
compared to the ease of Dropbox. If they added some better privacy settings,
RSS feeds, and some more viewing/downloading options, they could be player in
the photo sharing space.

~~~
atarashi
_Dropbox could definitely have my business there and be price competitive if
they offered say 250 gigs for under $100 a year._

Amazon S3 (some consider it wholesale) would cost you 3 times that, and that's
not even considering in/out bandwidth charges or Dropbox's nifty client and
version history (which lets you, for instance, restore "deleted" files).

~~~
frossie
The question is not whether dropbox is overcharging (I am quite happy to
concede they are not) compared to some other service. The point is purely made
from the user end. When I can own outright a 1TB drive for $99, what is the
psychological price point for which I am willing to pay not to maintain it?
Twice as much, sure. Three times, okay it hurts but maybe. Eight times?
Asbolutely not.

All I am saying is adoption will rise if the price point drops. Right now it
is high enough to turn off price-sensitive individuals.

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daveambrose
Great for them. As was said in prior threads and this one, it's a fantastic
product that I use on a daily basis.

I even noticed the subtle changes on the web interface some days ago. Nice
stuff and looking forward to the P2P system ahead.

~~~
eru
Apropos P2P: Ever heard of Wuala?

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jasongullickson
I've used allot of similar things, and I can say that Dropbox has been the one
I've stuck with the longest.

I've even managed to loose data using USB drives (mistakenly wiped the wrong
one, or lost it) but I haven't pulled an "unrecoverable boner" yet with DB.

Working with the same code across multiple OS platforms (rails code mostly)
it's been a lifesaver always having the latest copy (even offline).

I'm considering a paid account (reaching my limit) but like the others have
said, it's just beyond the "impulse buy" price-point for me these days...

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ashot
compare to the half dozen failed attempts by microsoft and other big co's to
solve this problem

~~~
old-gregg
Yeah, Linus rocks.

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hpvic03
I use Dropbox at my business school for every group project. I've probably
signed up at least 20 other people.

Knowing that you'll never have to email another attachment is an incredible
feeling.

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BenJones
Absolutely inspiring. It is going to keep me up tonight. Crazy easy to use.

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judegomila
Such a great product, such a great team!

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furburger
i wonder if amazon will stay on the "wholesale" side of this equation or
eventually move into the retail side...seems gdrive or whatever it is google
is planning might upset the amazon/N-front-ends racket

