People probably also had an easier time spelling 'Dropbox', than they did remembering 'Syncplicity'.
And for us on the bleeding edge, spelling 'getdropbox'
Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
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Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#22This is the similar kind of advice that those behind 37 Signals give in their book Rework http://amzn.to/hkrGuU
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only for content that's explicitly placed in your "Public" folder, not for anywhere else in your Dropbox.
Yes, hence the 'that are not shielded'
I think it seemed that you were trying to imply the dropbox's content (not just the public portion) would be visible to anyone.
I am glad this was clarified.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, hence the 'that are not shielded'
I think it seemed that you were trying to imply the dropbox's content (not just the public portion) would be visible to anyone. I am glad this was clarified.
No, definitely not, it's only the public folders and not the rest.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#25No one posted the funniest comment in the Quora thread, from Dropbox founder Drew Houston:
> http://www.zumsteg.net/2009/03/08/further-comparison-of-drop...
> (kidding -- mostly)
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#26Dropbox was a YC company, which meant they had quite a bit of free press and access to a lot of valley connections. I would imagine that had a lot to do with their success.
I'm sure it didn't hurt them but their execution to date has been impeccable. One thing has popped up recently: Dropbox relies on the urls to folders in 'boxes' that are shared to remain secret, nothing stops google from indexing the contents once the location is known, there is no 'robots.txt' that instructs google not to peek there. This could lead to a lot of people being highly surprised that the contents of thei…
Indeed it works. I switched the search term to a file name present in my shared folder and there it was.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#27Looking at products like Dropbox and Evernote, not to mention everything going on with iPhone/Android apps, I can't help but thing that they provide a bit of a counter to the conventional wisdom that native "fat clients" are dead. The people I know who use Dropbox basically never use the Dropbox website except to sign up and to download the client. The client is the magic, not the website. It makes me wonder what oth…
We've used a native client for many years and it served us well, only when we were able to give the users a comparable experience with just the browser did we make the switch. Even today there are still plenty of people that use the installed software, we've done what we could to make it backwards compatible.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#28People probably also had an easier time spelling 'Dropbox', than they did remembering 'Syncplicity'.
'Dropbox' is one of the best product names I've ever heard. Someone mentioned it to me once and I instantly knew exactly what it must be, and remembered it forever.
Rapidshare was pretty good too (as a name, the service sucks) and it surprises me that they never managed to expand in to dropbox's territory.
And with public shared folders dropbox is definitely expanding in to theirs.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#29How do you even pronounce syncplicity? Dropbox is a nobrainer in just about every language that is somewhat relevant on the internet for commercial reasons, that alone would give them an edge. Sycn?what? Oh, never mind, I'll just use dropbox. Cutesy names are rarely worth the downside. Keep it short, simple, easy to spell and pronounceable in an un-ambiguous way. Or you'll never even get to the point where you have t…
I'll download anything with a crappy name as long as the functionality is there. I really couldn't care less.
Do I really think Apple is a great name for a computer manufacturer? Definitely not on the surface. But they ran with it and now it's accepted as one of the strongest brands on the planet.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#30Dropbox was a YC company, which meant they had quite a bit of free press and access to a lot of valley connections. I would imagine that had a lot to do with their success.
Pretty important point. Most of the people on the East Coast I know who could use Syncplicity have never heard about it.