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Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

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Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#41
When we were trying to figure out if Dropbox would be a good sync tool for Leanpub, Peter went in to a local coffee shop and asked a bunch of people if they'd ever heard of Dropbox. All of the baristas and everyone else in their 20s had, and had accounts. About half of the people 30 or older had heard of it, and most of them had accounts.

We were pretty impressed with the numbers, and we ended up going with Dropbox, and we've never regretted it.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#42
post #11

I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community.…

Spot on. I am incredibly optimistic about Dropbox's future. It constantly blows my mind that home users don't have any file sharing running on their network. The go-to solution is to email files to each other, even while sitting on the same network. When I learned that Dropbox supported LAN sync, I immediately started recommending it as an alternative to emailing files back and forth. Just drop files you would normal…

If anything, what blows my mind is that Microsoft has failed that significantly on connecting systems which share a LAN. There should have been something as easy as Dropbox built into Windows, and made known to users, at least 10 years ago.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#43
post #37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be incredibly interesting if your dropbox machines all ran a bitorrent client that auto shared the syncing between them all. With logic to determine which machines are closest (in bandwidth) So that if I have my 5+ machines at home (desktops, laptops and phones, which all have the client on them) - they all see that they are on the same subnet and sync very fast between each other. Then update the cloud at t…

Windows Live Mesh, an equivalent Microsoft product, has the p2p sync functionality in addition to cloud sync. http://www.winsupersite.com/article/product-review/how-to-li...

I dual boot most of my machines, so I find anything that is 100% windows only to be less than optimal.

But the tech is interesting.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#44
post #11

I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community.…

What is fascinating to me is how quickly dropbox spread outside the HN demographic. My 70 year old mother, who was as far from a techical user as one could be, asked me in early 2009 if I used dropbox so she could share some photos with me. That's when I realized they were really on to something. It was just that easy to use, and it was spreading very rapidly in non-technical communities - they had reached a user like my mother within 6 months of public release. Unbelievable, and a real testament to the simplicity and elegance of the product.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. I am incredibly optimistic about Dropbox's future. It constantly blows my mind that home users don't have any file sharing running on their network. The go-to solution is to email files to each other, even while sitting on the same network. When I learned that Dropbox supported LAN sync, I immediately started recommending it as an alternative to emailing files back and forth. Just drop files you would normal…

If anything, what blows my mind is that Microsoft has failed that significantly on connecting systems which share a LAN. There should have been something as easy as Dropbox built into Windows, and made known to users, at least 10 years ago.

Microsoft had built in cloud storage, something like live space, or live disk, or something along those lines. It was very similar to dropbox, but for whatever reason it didn't catch on. I know a few people that still use it.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#46
post #11

I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community.…

My mom is using Dropbox. That says it all to me.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#47
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Live Mesh, an equivalent Microsoft product, has the p2p sync functionality in addition to cloud sync. http://www.winsupersite.com/article/product-review/how-to-li...

I dual boot most of my machines, so I find anything that is 100% windows only to be less than optimal. But the tech is interesting.

fwiw, it supports Mac as well.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#48
post #44
post #11

I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community.…

What is fascinating to me is how quickly dropbox spread outside the HN demographic. My 70 year old mother, who was as far from a techical user as one could be, asked me in early 2009 if I used dropbox so she could share some photos with me. That's when I realized they were really on to something. It was just that easy to use, and it was spreading very rapidly in non-technical communities - they had reached a user lik…

Dropbox spread like wildfire at my small university in Germany. Not so much (or not only) among students but among Professors and TAs.

Re: Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of

#50
post #11

I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community.…

>cloud computing -- that catchall phrase corporations use to describe services delivered via the Internet With this line they are streets ahead of most pure tech sites in terms of accuracy.

I love Dropbox for not using this horrible term.
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