

Instagram Designer Tim Van Damme Is Leaving Facebook For Dropbox - devonleigh
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/16/instagram-designer-tim-van-damme-is-leaving-facebook-for-dropbox/

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thehme
I can't help thinking that these sort of articles remind me of the
"entertainment" industry's gossip headlines. I would much rather read about
the acquisitions and business decisions being made by the tech giants, then
the gossip about the career decisions of the "celebrities" in the tech world

~~~
ndnichols
That's funny, I was just thinking, "I would love to be well-known enough one
day that my switching employers would make the front page of HN."

I hear you, though. To me, it matters a lot what I think about the
"celebrity." Christopher Hitchen's becoming an American citizen, for example,
felt like news to me because he's a thoughtful, worldly person who presumably
considered his decision. If Russell Brand became a citizen, though, I wouldn't
care and would just presume it was for tax reasons, or a joke, or whatever.

Considering that I haven't heard of Tim Van Damme before, I'm inclined to
agree with you and consider this gossip.

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rplacd
Apropos of not too much that's healthy for discourse, but I'm inclined to give
Russell Brand a token amount of redemption: he is, at the very least,
articulate to a very finely sharpened "t" \- that's the impression I've gotten
from his writing in the Grauniad [1]; and while I'm not wading into the debate
on whether he's simply just looking deeper into the usual tropes it indicates
a broader awareness than a vox no-so-pop.

[1] Here's his version of the bog-standard "Thatcher's dead: this is what I
remember of her years" sketch - he raises it from the dead by tossing the
tread-lightlies around The Classes and makes it about what Thatcherite
individualism meant for him as a prime target.
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-
brand...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-
margaret-thatcher)

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far33d
Dropbox is quickly unseating Facebook, who unseated Google before it, as the
premier bigco employer.

These kinds of talent shifts tend to accelerate as the company becomes more
successful. Remember when google was giving $1m offers to keep engineers from
going to Facebook pre-IPO?

Anecdotally, it looks like this is true for top college grads as well.

~~~
threeseed
Of all the internet companies Dropbox looks the most precarious to me.

The fact is that the core product kind of sucks. It is slow to upload, very
CPU intensive and incredibly slow to receive new features. And its focus on
API data syncing as a growth area seems fraught with danger given iCloud and
likely similar services from Microsoft, Ubuntu, Google etc.

It also has no stickiness associated to it. I could easily transition to a
competitor's product with no loss of data or productivity. And if it wasn't
the best of a pretty sad bunch then I would have years ago.

~~~
rdl
Dropbox seems to have two major value propositions: ease of use, and
multiplatform. If you just use it on desktops, there are already several far
superior options. "Ease of use" isn't sticky.

The big challenge is mobile. Dropbox's main stickiness is when developers
adopt the Dropbox API, particularly on mobile. If you just use Apple for
mobile, iCloud is in some ways superior (although has Dropbox's same horrible
security). There's no one doing a better job than Dropbox of crossplatform on
lame devices like iOS and Android in addition to desktops (and game systems,
etc.).

(I admit I'm pretty biased against Dropbox because they both lied blatantly
and horribly about security for a long time, and then, when caught, did a
minimal job of just handwaving and continuing as before. They make file
security markedly worse for users than it was before Dropbox.)

I don't think "dropbox for teams" is much stickiness; I don't know of anyone
using it in serious deployments, and in a serious deployment, switching
wouldn't be that hard, either.

~~~
falk
"(I admit I'm pretty biased against Dropbox because they both lied blatantly
and horribly about security for a long time, and then, when caught, did a
minimal job of just handwaving and continuing as before. They make file
security markedly worse for users than it was before Dropbox.)"

Don't forget they were implicated as "coming soon" in the whole PRISM/NSA
saga. No thanks.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
giants-n...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-
data)

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beggi
David Cramer has also left DISQUS for Dropbox.
([http://justcramer.com/2013/07/16/dropbox/](http://justcramer.com/2013/07/16/dropbox/))

~~~
johns
He was actually at tenexer in between the two.

~~~
zeeg
tenXer _

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rsync
The billion dollar instagram acquisition is becoming the insane-valuation-
punchline du jour and will eventually supersede all previous punchlines from
the first bubble.

~~~
tptacek
Has Instagram's usage plummeted or does it remain one of the most popular
photo-sharing social networks in the world? Does photo-sharing remain one of
the most popular activities on Facebook? Is it become less apparent, instead
of more apparent, that a Facebook competitor could have leveraged Instagram as
a threat?

~~~
pdog
I know you're asking these questions rhetorically, but for those who don't
know, Instagram usage _exploded_ after the acquisition and the consensus in
the Valley is that it sold to Facebook for incredibly cheap.

~~~
bibinou
Well, they launched on Android right before being acquired too.

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mathattack
If viewed on a "Purchase price/employees" ratio, this is an expensive move.
The PR of a hire like this is also VERY valuable.

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guard-of-terra
Should be awarded with Medal of Brownian movement.

