Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

blog.loom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 147 posts

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#71

Post by calinet6 »

kylec wrote: post #44

This is really disappointing. I have been a paying Loom member since shortly after the service was released, it's too bad it wasn't enough to keep it an independent company. After DivvyShot, Everpix, Snapjoy, and now Loom, I don't think I can trust another photo management startup again.

This is a huge problem with SAAS in general. The ephemerality not only of our data, but of the entire service, is highly disturbing.

Next time I buy a tool, I'm going to look for something I can hold in my hand (metaphorically speaking), and use until I decide not to.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#72

Post by pearjuice »

innonate wrote: post #33
cschmidt wrote: post #14

I think the photo management space is like blog platforms. They die so rapidly, I don't want to invest the considerable time to try out a new startup. Dropbox bought out Snapjoy and now Loom. Everpix is gone. I guess Picturelife is still around.

I'm sorry, but I think these startups just give other startups a bad name. I'm the CEO of Picturelife and I wouldn't dream of rolling over like this so easily. We have thousands of customers and just killing our service would be such an assault on their trust. All these services you mention are just taking the easy way out. There's a long road ahead for us and we'll going to keep making the product and experience bet…

I hope you realize comments cannot be deleted after a hour or so. So you either speak the truth or will hurt your public image so bad in a few months/years.

Speaking of your promise... What is "so easily"? Does it have 6 or 9 trailing zeros?

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#73

Post by shblt »

bjeanes wrote: post #59
innonate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I think these startups just give other startups a bad name. I'm the CEO of Picturelife and I wouldn't dream of rolling over like this so easily. We have thousands of customers and just killing our service would be such an assault on their trust. All these services you mention are just taking the easy way out. There's a long road ahead for us and we'll going to keep making the product and experience bet…

Very very very happy Picturelife user here. Your S3 support is the icing on the cake — but please charge me a flat fee for using your software with my own storage. I want to pay for this great storage but your pricing model only prices on usage. You're not selling me a utility — you're selling me your fantastic product. Let me pay for it!

I just signed for Picturelife to take a look at the interface. I said to myself "I'd use this if I could host the images myself" and closed the tab... then I came back to HN and saw your comment that it does support S3. A "host your own" plan would have been an instant purchase for me if it was available.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#74

Post by monokrome »

bambam12897 wrote: post #47
sidcool wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They worked hard for that, didn't they?

Definitely! I'm just being realistic - These press releases are basically the tea ceremony everyone is expected to perform. If you just made several mil I honestly doubt you're thinking about making the "transition as smooth as possible". You're thinking "should I buy a Lambo or a Ferrari?" They probably got a memo from Dropbox saying "now that we own your ass, here is a press release that you'll publish asap"

Your assumption is not very realistic.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#75

Post by enjo »

innonate wrote: post #33
cschmidt wrote: post #14

I think the photo management space is like blog platforms. They die so rapidly, I don't want to invest the considerable time to try out a new startup. Dropbox bought out Snapjoy and now Loom. Everpix is gone. I guess Picturelife is still around.

I'm sorry, but I think these startups just give other startups a bad name. I'm the CEO of Picturelife and I wouldn't dream of rolling over like this so easily. We have thousands of customers and just killing our service would be such an assault on their trust. All these services you mention are just taking the easy way out. There's a long road ahead for us and we'll going to keep making the product and experience bet…

"I'm the CEO of Picturelife and I wouldn't dream of rolling over like this so easily."

I'm sorry, but I don't believe you. If someone waves $10M in front of you, you're going to take it. I think that's ok and I don't think it's (exactly) giving anyone a "bad name" (in the moral sense). It does mean that I'm going to be hesitant to put my photos into a startup again.

Are you willing to put out a guarantee? Are you willing to refund 100% of the money I paid in the last year if you sell and the service is shutdown? I'm betting there is some kind of legal instrument available to me, as a user, to soften the blow when this inevitably happens.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#76

Post by karpodiem »

calinet6 wrote: post #68
sidcool wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They worked hard for that, didn't they?

I'm tired of this "they worked hard for that" BS with acqui-hires and shutdowns. Yeah, sure, they worked hard, but in the end they get a big fat F for the end result. Services don't last forever, but I'm not gonna congratulate someone who runs around in circles for 3 years purporting to deliver a product of value, and then gives up when offered a better deal for themselves. They didn't build a product, they built a n…

Yes!

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#77

Post by m3rc »

calinet6 wrote: post #68
sidcool wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They worked hard for that, didn't they?

I'm tired of this "they worked hard for that" BS with acqui-hires and shutdowns. Yeah, sure, they worked hard, but in the end they get a big fat F for the end result. Services don't last forever, but I'm not gonna congratulate someone who runs around in circles for 3 years purporting to deliver a product of value, and then gives up when offered a better deal for themselves. They didn't build a product, they built a n…

Yeah this is my main problem with the way "startup culture" seems to work. There's a lot of people in my university really pushing people to start their own businesses, but the general reasoning just seems to be "come up with something, advertise so that you get bought out, take the money". There's no emphasis on actually making anything, just on drumming up hype for an idea and selling that.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#78

Post by SixSigma »

subpixel wrote: post #38

Crap. I bought a year of Loom for precisely the reason that I do not want my photos taking up space on my drive. Now I have to explain to my extended family why all the confusion they put up with setting things up was for naught.

My virtual server costs $200 per year and has 50gb of virtual disk space. I can run whatever I like.

What does buying saas really give me that a whole server doesn't? Obviously one needs to be a Unix hacker to make it do anything but I've got that covered.

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#79

Post by timdafweak »

bjeanes wrote: post #59
innonate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I think these startups just give other startups a bad name. I'm the CEO of Picturelife and I wouldn't dream of rolling over like this so easily. We have thousands of customers and just killing our service would be such an assault on their trust. All these services you mention are just taking the easy way out. There's a long road ahead for us and we'll going to keep making the product and experience bet…

Very very very happy Picturelife user here. Your S3 support is the icing on the cake — but please charge me a flat fee for using your software with my own storage. I want to pay for this great storage but your pricing model only prices on usage. You're not selling me a utility — you're selling me your fantastic product. Let me pay for it!

I'd like to second that opinion. It is a FANTASTIC product, and I would be more than happy to pay to use my own storage. Thank you innonate!

Re: Dropbox acquires Loom (YC W12)

#80

Post by georgemcbay »

kingnight wrote: post #34
Roedou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find Dropbox works for you with a giant library? I have ~1.5Tb of photos at this point, which seems too big for any of their accounts. How do you have it set up?

Ha, is "giant" relative or what... I am currently at ~98% of my 215GB Dropbox account and am stressing about what to do. The next tier doesn't seem cost effective for me and I don't have much room for clearing house. One thought I have is converting a sizable portion of old Canon CR2 raw files to adobe DNG since I've noticed that reduces filesize by roughly 20% for the files that I have. This isn't really a long term…

This may or may not be relevant to you but for a long time I was auto-converting my CR2 files to DNG during Lightroom import (without embedding the original CR2 in the DNG since I was doing it for space savings as you are thinking of doing) and now I kind of regret it because the "Digital Lens Optimizer" that ships with recent versions of Canon's DPP is actually really good at pulling out image detail that Lightroom or ACR doesn't give me in the demosaicing process on photos taken with Canon lenses (since only those have 'DLO' profiles). And DPP doesn't support DNG loading.

Granted, Lightroom/ACR still do a very good job of rendering RAW files, so the difference isn't that great without pixel-peeping, but it might be something you want to think about when it comes to switching formats.

I've since gone back to importing the plain CR2s as my on-disk RAW format -- in practice CR2s are more universally useable than DNG files since not everything can read DNG whereas since you can always go from CR2->DNG, everything that can read DNG is covered by CR2s.

Post reply on HN