

DropBox grows like weed. Reaches 2 million users. - rokhayakebe
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/dropbox-reaches-2-million-users-continues-to-grow/

======
mrshoe
You know what's really cool about this? Microsoft and Apple have both taken
stabs at this problem multiple times. The companies that make the operating
systems on about 99% of PCs have both tried this. They've had some success at
it, but it's never been a killer app or a feature that people rave about.

Knowing that, dhouston still created DropBox. He did a fantastic job. He
knocked it out of the park. Now 2 million people have used the thing and he's
well on his way to building a very successful business with it.

Don't let the big guys scare you.

~~~
Elepsis
I suspect people underestimate how successful Microsoft and Apple have been
with their competitive services.

~~~
huhtenberg
Care to elaborate ?

~~~
s3graham
Anecdotally, I see FolderShare quite widely used. I have no idea how number of
users compares to DropBox though.

~~~
zemoo
FolderShare was acquired. I don't know if Microsoft has done a terrible lot
with the program since the acquisition to be able to claim the success as its
own.

~~~
sriramk
Actually, the closest Microsoft equivalent is Live Mesh.

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newsdog
I'm a customer. it's indispensable.

~~~
jraines
Agreed. I actually got introduced to it by a client who you wouldn't expect to
use a startup's product. Fastest I've ever gone from free account to paying
customer.

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chaosmachine
I'd love to know what percentage of their new users come from their affiliate
program:

<https://www.getdropbox.com/affiliates>

------
s3graham
Any info on how many are at $10 and $20? I love it, but I'm a freeloader.

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axod
They should do all they can to buy <http://dropbox.com/>

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tom_b
Anything that scores me points with my wife gets my $$$.

When my wife called me and said, "Honey, I love dropbox" I figured this team
had hit a homerun. I'd been pushing a backup/network solution for her for a
few years because of various harddrive failures and file loss debacles, but
only dropbox dropped in and "just worked" for her - she's the perfect
candidate for dropbox, moving between multiple laptops and computer labs for
document editing and statistics programming.

Good luck to the team there and many thanks. I hope you all get filthy rich.
Seriously.

------
telemachos
I'm one of the 1 million users whose accounts are dormant.

I love the product, but it bothers me that it's not open source. (Not their
problem or anyone else's, but I prefer not to use close-source software if I
can help it.)

Also, after I don't know how long, the whole "the API is around the corner"
thing began to feel like a shell game.

~~~
unalone
It's two years old. Give them time, they're evolving their site constantly.
Also, I don't think you know what a shell game is.

 _I love the product, but it bothers me that it's not open source. (Not their
problem or anyone else's, but I prefer not to use close-source software if I
can help it.)_

They created one of the fastest and best methods of syncing there is, maybe
the best one if simply being intuitive counts. They make their money by
licensing it to you. How would you take that and open-source it without
killing dhouston's method of making a living?

Also: What's this about not liking closed-source? That's like saying you
dislike songs that you can't download as individual tracks. Maybe it's cool
that some things are broken down and easy to tinker with, but it's silly to
turn that into disliking the ones you can't break.

~~~
telemachos
> Also, I don't think you know what a shell game is.

If my imprecision bothers you, feel free to s/con game/shell game/.

>Also: What's this about not liking closed-source? That's like saying you
dislike songs that you can't download as individual tracks. Maybe it's cool
that some things are broken down and easy to tinker with, but it's silly to
turn that into disliking the ones you can't break.

I don't think you know what the value of free and open software is. It has
nothing to do with wanting things "you can break." I have no idea how you make
that leap (open source == breakable?). I would add that a closed source
application built (as far as I've read) on open source pieces (SVN? Python?
Rsync?) is especially off-putting to me.

To clarify one other point. Ubuntu has already reverse-engineered Dropbox (as
Ubuntu One), so if Dropbox's profit relies on their having the sole access to
the magic formula, it's already too late. Anything can be (and generally will
be) reverse engineered. I don't think that closing off the source is a royal
road to success.

~~~
unalone
_If my imprecision bothers you, feel free to s/con game/shell game/._

Your _imprecision_ , as you call it, is that you are associating Dropbox
saying they're working on an API with a shady person trying to steal your
money. Unless you've paid them for an API that you didn't receive, they
haven't conned you.

 _I don't think you know what the value of free and open software is._

I'll hazard a guess: It's free, and also anybody's able to improve it if they
want. I've only got five years' experience with open source, though, so
perhaps I'm still an amateur at this.

 _To clarify one other point. Ubuntu has already reverse-engineered Dropbox
(as Ubuntu One), so if Dropbox's profit relies on their having the sole access
to the magic formula, it's already too late. Anything can be (and generally
will be) reverse engineered. I don't think that closing off the source is a
royal road to success._

So they use Dropbox's exact code? Or are you saying that they saw what Dropbox
did and decided to copy it? Because that's not reverse engineering.

Funny story: Once upon a time I thought that open source would lead to
everything getting better. I thought Firefox, for instance, would just
continue to be an unstoppable beast because, after all, anybody who wanted to
could make it do anything any other browser did. Then I realized Firefox was
slow and ugly on the Mac, moved to the closed-source Safari, and enjoy its
incredibly sleek design. It was around the time I stopped using Ubuntu because
I realized the closed-source OS X was better. Now that Windows 7 is spreading,
I think Ubuntu's dropped to my third-favorite OS.

The problem with your line of thinking is that open source doesn't pay. The
best people in certain fields, meanwhile, only work for money, and
occasionally only for large gobs of money. That includes interface designers,
and a lot of the people who work on fixing the ugly problems that nobody
really likes working on. So open source's downfall is that it can't compete
with the quality and focus of closed-source. It's the problem with democracy,
so to speak.

I like open source for some things. I still haven't found an open-source
application that's as cutting-edge as its closed equivalents. Even Quicksilver
left me dissatisfied until I discovered the Google-sponsored Quick Search Box.

~~~
Erwin
Safari is based on the KDE browser's open source rendering engine, however. I
don't know how much of it is left but certainly it was a huge boon for them --
and later Google -- to start with a highly standards-compliant and open code
base.

I've found the best OS projects are system libraries and utilities and tools
where the developer is also the end user. The more UI is piled up, the more
non-developer involvement is needed the worse it gets. The worst are open
source games; nothing good since Nethack.

------
spicyj
Holy crap. That's about 5000 new users per day.

~~~
huhtenberg
While impressive, the number is actuallu quite meaningless until they disclose
how many of these become _active_ users.

~~~
breck
nearly 1 million, as it says in the article.

------
icey
Wow, congrats on the huge growth dhouston

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greyman
I would like to ask, if someone can compare DropBox with Live Mesh. I tried
DropBox in the past, but at that time it could not get over our company
firewall.

I use now Mesh with satisfaction, and just comparing the features, in Mesh I
have 5GB web storage (while can sync also over 5GB limit, in which case it
will just not be stored on the cloud), and it also has remote desktop. Now the
question is if there is some reason for me to re-evalute Dropbox again.

~~~
MikeW
I'll take a stab at it as I've used both. Or rather I've used both for actual
work.

DropBox wins for me because it can access their servers through our firewall
(which only allows HTTP/S access to less than 5 ports). Live Mesh could not do
this.

I found dropbox a tiny barrier to entry. It was so unobtrusive. Live Mesh pops
up stuff on startup, complains that it can't access the internet. Etc. Dropbox
just stays silent and waits file locks are released and internet connectivity
returns.

Getting at my files online is SO much easier with DropBox, ESPECIALLY now
since they have the new UI. It's fast, Mesh isn't.

I've never used the remote desktop feature so I can't comment.

Oh and the feature I use nearly daily is the Public folder where I just save a
file in there, right click in Explorer, copy the public URL and give them the
URL rather than worry if the email client can support a 10MB file. Brilliant,
much faster than slow Messenger file transfers! I don't believe Mesh has this
ability.

Anyway, DropBox is a simple enough concept and I feel they refined it so well
that anyone can use it. Mesh is just complex and has way too much UI stuff
going on.

I'm still well under the 2GB limit but have a 50GB Pro account (for now
anyway) - just waiting for the selective sync feature now

------
coffeemug
I had a chance to briefly chat with Drew, and he's an extremely sharp,
knowledgeable, _and_ helpful guy. I suppose he might not have been that good
when he started Dropbox, but he's certainly one of the smartest people I've
had the privilege of talking to in the Valley. If you believe that A players
hire A players, the whole Dropbox team must be top notch. They deserve every
bit of the success.

------
jamesbritt
I'm curious if anyone is using this on KDE3?

The site refers to "Linux" as if it had some single monolithic desktop
manager, but what they really mean is "running Nautilus", a GNOME file
manager. I'm reluctant to just install nautilus for fear of desktop side
effects.

~~~
telemachos
I got it working just fine on a Debian machine (Lenny) running Openbox without
Nautilus. You can do the installation purely from the command-line and run the
daemon in the same way. The one downside is that Nautilus used to be the only
way to get visual notitification of syncs, etc. I got syncing just fine, but
nothing on a panel or the like.

I haven't used Dropbox in some time though, so someone may have figured out a
hack to integrate the tool with KDE's panel in some way. Their forums are
pretty active with a variety of Linux distros and desktop environments. Search
there.

------
wavesplash
Drew and the crew deserve the success. I'm a very happy user. The file sync is
near instantaneous. If I'm working on a document with someone, by the time
they tell me they've saved it in the IM window, it's already transferring to
my local dropbox.

------
akrymski
Great achievement. Some may argue dropbox is a feature rather than a business,
something Windows / OS X should do out of the box. And indeed they should, but
they don't (not nearly that well anyway). But as soon as the success of
DropBox is evident, I think we can expect the next version of OS X to have a
"dropbox" that's part of their mobile me strategy, and MS to finally push out
this feature aggressively. After all they are both after recurring revenues of
this sort. Let's hope they buy DropBox before then.

~~~
akrymski
BTW I've signed up cause I've lost my USB stick =) still prefer USB sticks as
upload speeds are slow here.

------
kvs
One thing I'd prefer is dropbox using _my_ S3 buckets so irony rely on them
only for syncing. What are the economics of such an approach?

~~~
mhansen
How many of dropbox's paying customers have their own S3 buckets?

------
DanLar75
For those looking for an alternative to dropbox I can recommend SpiderOak
(<https://spideroak.com>)

\- Unlimited number of devices (computers) in one account \- Slightly cheaper
\- Windows, Mac and Linux client \- 100% Zero-knowledge security and client
side encryption key creation.

My 5 cent

------
barrkel
My GF has used both DropBox and SugarSync extensively, and the vote goes to
SugarSync - more flexible in what's shared.

------
pclark
great services attract tons of users, who'da thought it.

~~~
joez
Not to turn this into a huge circle jerk but for me it's the simplicity. I can
recommend it to my friends without worrying that they will ask me to
troubleshoot later.

Edit: And I am sure it is the same for other people. The simplicity adds to
their ability to spread like "weeds" because people aren't afraid to
recommending it.

~~~
pclark
if there was one service that deserved a good circle jerk it'd be dropbox,
though.

------
GiraffeNecktie
For someone working regularly from multiple computers running both Windows and
Linux, Dropbox has been a lifesaver. Good on them.

------
pxlpshr
Dropbox is a brilliant service that's so well executed it makes baby jesus
cry. That's how much I love it. (paying customer)

------
fjabre
Curious: has anyone done anything similar using S3 as a backend?

~~~
mbrubeck
Yes. Dropbox uses S3 as its backend. (And Jungle Disk is a somewhat similar
product that lets you use your own S3 account.)

------
mahmud
How about a working CLI client now? the python one is broken.

------
daok
Anyone can explain me how this business can do money other than having some
plan that cost some money. I suppose that most of the account are "free" one.
I have hard time to understand how it can be profitable to run.

~~~
unalone
They charge money for more space. That's _exactly_ how they make money. So
what else are you asking?

~~~
joez
I have to agree it was a badly worded question. I think the OP has bandwidth
concerns. Dropbox could charge based off an upload metric similar to Evernote
(which gives 40 MB of transfer free a month).

<http://www.evernote.com/about/premium/>

While that model more closely aligns to bandwidth costs, I think dropbox is in
a different market. For one, Dropbox is competing with external hard drives.
It's easier to understand the value proposition when you can compare based on
storage.

I sure as hell have no idea how much 40 MB is in terms of use. I do some word
docs and some pictures. If I do 5 saves an hour, averaging 10 kb in size and I
work for 40 hours a week, is 40 MB enough storage?

~~~
eli
Limits based on some ineffable-to-the-layman bandwidth usage numbers totally
break the "it just works" factor

~~~
unalone
Though I must admit, every time I share something with a friend in a public
folder I worry that I'll trip up some "amount of shit you can give people"
limit and end up banned.

------
theklub
Count down to google acquisition?

~~~
vdm
You know, it _would_ make me buy Google Apps Premier edition, even though I
don't need its other benefits.

------
quizbiz
is the analogy in the title really necessary?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It does add a little - it's clearly not viral growth, that would be millions
overnight. Weeds self-seed and grow steadily overtime getting larger as
resources allow - it seems to be a fine analogy. Necessary, no; worthy, yes.

------
dpcan
I think I've created 2 accounts there before to check it out but never used it
again. So, if you're counting "active users" it's only 1,999,998

The app looks great, I just have no use for it. I'm just saying, call it like
it is. This is an account-tally, not an "user" count.

"User" counts implies "use" - but this may not be the truth.

~~~
jonknee
Someone didn't read the article:

"Of those, Dropbox has almost one million users that are active."

It was hidden in the first paragraph though.

~~~
huhtenberg
It'd be nice to know if idle accounts that still connect to the service are
included in the count. I am guessing that they are as 50% user retention rate
is an atypically (very) high number.

~~~
andrew1
Maybe it's an atypically good product.

