

Divvyshot (YC W09) launches refreshingly simple photo sharing - zaveri
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10452446-250.html

======
gbookman
The three experiences founder Sam Odio described in this interview really
shows how valuable Divvyshot is:

[http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2901-NY-Business-
Strategi...](http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2901-NY-Business-Strategies-
Examiner~y2009m7d5-Intreview-with-Sam-Odio-Founder-of-Divvyshot)

~~~
decode
> I went to Costa Rica with three other friends. At the end of the trip each
> of us had about 1GB of photos. [...] The entire process was cumbersome and
> took about an hour.

This means that each person "uploaded" 1GB of data and "downloaded" 3GB of
data. In total, 16 GB of data was transferred. Doing this manually via USB
drive is about an order of magnitude faster than over your average broadband
Internet connection. It's not clear to me that Divvyshot has solved the
problem here.

> I never ended up getting that group photo - even though low resolution
> copies of it tantalize me on Facebook.

I was surprised to realize several years ago that one of Facebook's greatest
contributions to my life was that it completely solved the photo sharing
problem and had done it so well that I didn't even notice. Now I get
everyone's photos from every event, I get notified when they're uploaded, and
it seems like everyone I know can use it without problems. Sure, I wish it
supported higher resolutions, but the medium-res images are good enough for
95% of people. If they would just allow slightly higher resolutions, then it
would be perfect for almost all of my needs.

~~~
Sam_Odio
> Sure, I wish it supported higher resolutions, but the medium-res images are
> good enough for 95% of people.

Where did you get 95%? I've heard this before yet I don't know of anyone
(besides us) who's actually taken the time to ask users if med-res is good
enough.

When founding Divvyshot I used Amazon mechanical turk to conduct a quick
market survey (with hundreds of respondents). A few highlights:

77% of respondents knew what hi-resolution photos were and preferred them.

43% had manually increased the resolution setting on their camera.

77% had been promised photos from a social event within the last few months
and had never received them.

~~~
ugh
Being able to just hand out an URL instead of burning several CDs or
repeatedly handing out and collecting some USB drive if you want to exchange
high resolution photos sounds like an advantage to me.

Email is still no alternative. Gmail, for example, has a 25 MB limit. Good for
maybe five photos. Something like dropbox might be. (But you cannot share
there if your friends don’t have accounts.) – edit: Ah, just noticed that’s
seemingly also the case with divvyshot.

Well, that’s a problem you should work on – I cannot and will not force my
friends to sign up for anything when I just want to share photos. That sort of
defeats the whole purpose. There already is a unholy proliferation of all
kinds of services you need a password for. That’s nice if all you want is a
nice collection of great tools (you can pick and chose and end up only with a
handful) but not so nice if you have to force your friends to sign up when you
want to use the thing for one of its main use cases.

I bet you could make it possible to download and maybe even contribute (adding
photos by sending them via Email, maybe?) without needing to sign up. Your use
cases should work without me having to force people to sign up and hate me and
your service as a consequence.

I know your whole signup process is dead simple (make it even simpler be not
having people type their password twice) and you don’t even need to use your
real Email address and you don’t even send out a welcome Email (all great
things, really, I wish everyone were like you) but I know quite a few people
(and not just nerds) who are allergic to any kind of signup form.

~~~
ugh
I have to correct myself once again. You can actually upload photos without
signing up, just (as I suggested :) by sending them by Email. Cool! Just
tested it, works great. That feature is a bit hidden, though, but that makes
for a nice experience when you discover it :)

I still think you cannot download full resolution photos without signing up.
Did I miss anything?

------
jdietrich
It's rather juvenile of me, but the name makes me laugh - in the dialect of my
native Liverpool, the word 'divvy' means idiot.

On a less juvenile note, the UX looks beautiful, but I would imagine that it
would be hard to convince people to abandon the perfectly serviceable methods
that they are using to share photos already.

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=divvy>

------
mleonhard
How do they plan to make money?

~~~
Sam_Odio
We have an announcement to make about that in about 2-3 months. Stay tuned ;)

------
TheSOB88
Comes across as an awfully bad name; I hope they change it. Sounds like they
wanted "Shareshot", but it was taken. Divvy's an awkward word. Plus, it
apparently means 'idiot' in Liverpudlian.

~~~
Sam_Odio
Unfortunately there aren't very many names available to startups these days.
You can thank domain squatters for that. Once we can afford to buy something
nicer we'll probably get rid of Divvy.

In the meantime we just have to take heart that the population of the
liverpool metro area (850k) is 0.01% of the world's population.

~~~
nedwin
In Australia a "divvy van" is slang for a police car with a cage in the back
for transporting prisoners. It didn't come to mind when I thought of Divvyshot
until this thread :)

