Dropbox is such a great name for the service, much better than Syncplicity. I think that might have facilitated their success.
Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
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Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#42This guy already said it best: http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-tha...
Thanks for linking to the original. There's some real gems in here from the founder of Syncplicity. For instance, not having a Mac client meant that the tech press wouldn't touch it. Then, they wouldn't write about it. That's pretty enlightening.
A similar thing happened with a famous Word Processor not having a word count.
The designers found that nobody used word count - except for Journalists. Guess who write reviews of new word processors?
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#43"Dropbox limited its feature set on purpose. It had one folder and that folder always synced without any issues -- it was magic. Syncplicity could sync every folder on your computer until you hit our quota."
I think I had started to use Dropbox because of its popularity on LifeHacker and other sites. One of my first complaints was that I was required to use a single "My Dropbox" folder instead of being able to use my own folder structure. However, I quickly adapted to the Dropbox model and realized that for every computer that's connected to Dropbox, everything that's in the Dropbox folder gets synchronized and everything that is not in the Dropbox folder is not. Its simplicity is probably the reason why I am still using it.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Non-programmers tend to think that adding a software feature is akin to adding on to a house. Sure, it take some effort and money, but the resulting house is surely better, right? (This isn't always true, of course, but still) In reality, adding a software feature is often like adding onto a house in the center of it, expanding the rest of the house around it to make room. Suddenly the job looks a lot tougher.
Or perhaps if you told them, it's like adding scenes to a film, they'd understand. There's a reason for deleted scenes.
How about "it's like if they took [your favorite sport] and added a new rule to it. Imagine how much all the theory, leagues, player valuations, etc. would all change."
Or slightly more precise, but less accessible—"what if your favorite fighting game got a new character? What if your favorite MMO got a new class?"
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#45How 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.
It's better than FruitOfTheTreeOfKnowledgeOfGoodAndEvil2000.biz
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a little contradiction to the statement "My philosophy is that they're right if their feature request is right only if it works for 80% of your customers." . Apparently sometimes a small minority of customers still can make all the difference.
I think it's important to distinguish "platform compatibility" from the kinds of feature requests he's talking about, because I don't think the take home lesson is necessarily "cater to some minorities' requests". Adding Mac support didn't make DropBox any more complicated for the end user -- there were no new corner cases or potential conflict scenarios, no new steps in the setup, no additional configuration complex…
Adding Mac support didn't make DropBox any more complicated for the end user.
I suspect that's not strictly true. Mac OS X and Windows file systems are subtly different in features (hard/soft links, aliases, .lnk files; files with multiple streams; various Finder annotations to files), and I suspect that once you sync to both Windows and Mac you will run into weird issues. Of course, syncing to multiple platforms is probably only something "power users" would do, and they can tolerate some teething problems.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
And for us on the bleeding edge, spelling 'getdropbox'
Nowadays, users are using Google instead of typing URLs. Even if they know they URL.
Indeed. My work's web server logs show that the number one referrer is a Google search for the full URL of the site.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#48It's very simple: it Just Worked, and it was Easy. Those two things combined to make it feel like magic.
The founder of Syncplicity (even the name sounds complex!) said it best:
"In the end, it really came down to one incredibly genius idea: Dropbox limited its feature set on purpose. It had one folder and that folder always synced without any issues -- it was magic. Syncplicity could sync every folder on your computer until you hit our quota. (Unfortunately, that feature was used to synchronize C:\Windows\ for dozens of users -- doh!) Our company had too many features and this created confusion amongst our customer base. This in turn led to enough customer support issues that we couldn't innovate on the product, we were too busy fixing things.
After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved."
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#49Looking 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…
Without the website though to compliment it dropbox would have been less valuable to me, although still the best syncing solution. There have been many times at uni or at someones house where the website interface has come in very handy.
Re: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t
#50Dropbox 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.
Notice this too, on the marketing front:
we had issues getting the press excited at launch. We built a fantastic Windows client. 3 years ago, everyone was running Windows. We were so excited to show the press, yet they all had Macs. Walt Mossberg wouldn't write about our product because it was PC only. Months after we hired our PR agency, we found out that they had never even used our product... because they too only had Macs. It's pretty hard to pitch a service when you haven't used it.*
I'm surprised: I could see a fantastic Windows client being okay before 2004 or so (this might be because I got a PowerBook in 2004, but roll with it). By three years ago the return of the Mac was obvious to pretty much everybody, especially people who care about computing. The people who're running tech blogs, writing forum posts, and so on are disproportionately Mac users.
(http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-tha...)