I'm so happy for JP!
I remember chatting with him back when we were both in junior high and he was talking about applying to incubators and doing startups - it's great to see what he's doing now!
Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
#42great it's Instagram with a business model... Smart move from Dropbox and Snapjoy ... I guess Dropbox is going to be your main smart and easy to use hard drive in the cloud... That's a serious business if they are able to pull that off..
ugm, that "serious" business (I don't think they make money as of today) competes with Google.. you know, THE google, that gives you 5GB free, instead of D-B 2. I say they have serious _competition_. But serious business -- not so much.
They made 240 million last year in revenue. Not sure about what their burn rate is but they seem to be on the up and getting integrated into a lot of applications which improves their tie ins.
Google gives away their storage but it is nowhere near the level of ease as Dropbox for non-technical people IMHO.
Re: Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even big "safe" companies like Microsoft and Google discontinue services. It's probably better to accept the fact that services come and go as the price of progress and figure out how to live in such a world. This is actually one of the ironic casualties of the cloud. In the old days you bought your packaged software and it was pretty much guaranteed to work as long as you didn't change your setup (OS, hardware, etc)…
"This is actually one of the ironic casualties of the cloud. In the old days you bought your packaged software and it was pretty much guaranteed to work as long as you didn't change your setup (OS, hardware, etc)." And this led to a lot of other problems, for example, you couldn't keep up with new technological innovations because you needed older systems for some programs. It's an interesting question, which practic…
I think the best approach is to make sure whatever service you decide to use has good import/export features.
A boss at a job I worked at a few years ago still keeps his contacts in an ancient version of Lotus organizer without VCard export support. As a result he's pretty much locked into it unless he ponies up $100 for the latest version of the software (released in 2003) which has VCard export. He's too cheap to do that so he'll have to stick with it as long as he is still on a version of Windows that supports 16bit software.
Re: Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
#44I'm really happy for the Snapjoy team - I love their product! But to be honest, I'm a little bummed. I thought that since this service was making money through subscriptions, they would be around for a while. I spent a lot if time and effort moving my entire photo library to their cloud. I know they haven't given any details about the future of the product, but I imagine they will move the team to DropBox products. A…
What services are safe? Companies that haven't taken funding and are profitable. If they have taken funding then they are forced to look for an exit (acquisition, IPO, etc.). It's a ticking time bomb.
Re: Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
#45I let out another sigh of despair when I heard this. It feels like Dropbox is moving further away from my use-case and into media wonderland.
I use Dropbox as a serious tool for synching and sharing files between my own computers, and with quite a number of other people and companies to do the same. My Dropbox work files are over 50gb. I'm willing to pay for this, and of course do so.
My photos these days do come from multiple sources. However with 11 years of digital pictures, 20+ mb per picture from the latest camera (and thousands of shots) and with a new Go Pro Hero HD in the house, the amount of data storge required dwarfs the capability of Dropbox and my capped Internet connection. The 500gb plan, meanwhile, is $500 per year. That's a lot of money but also insufficient space for photos. I also don't really want to share that many of them, and if I do, then they go straight to the sharing site de jour.
So I see Dropbox as a professional tool for work files, but an overpriced amateur tool for pictures. The app and website seem to keep pushing me to turn on photos, and I wish they would stop.
But yes, Snapjoy does look nice, and if priced correctly could be a tool of choice. Just play nice with iPhoto, Lightroom and Aperture.
Re: Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
#46I let out another sigh of despair when I heard this. It feels like Dropbox is moving further away from my use-case and into media wonderland. I use Dropbox as a serious tool for synching and sharing files between my own computers, and with quite a number of other people and companies to do the same. My Dropbox work files are over 50gb. I'm willing to pay for this, and of course do so. My photos these days do come fro…
with specialized services on the Internet for just about any kind of data, it makes less sense to use general purpose tool like Dropbox.
Not to mention that cloud storage is becoming core feature of many operating systems. If Dropbox doesn't reinvent itself, it could easily face the fate of Netscape.
So what I'm thinking is that Dropbox will keep building/buying these specific-purpose services which will all work on top of your dropbox account (similar how Facebook built photo-sharing and other features on top of their social network). This is basically the only way for them to stay relevant since pure cloud storage is at this point commoditized and there is zero lock-in.
Re: Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy (YC S11) And Puts Photos Into Its Focus
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm a little bummed. I thought [...] they would be around for a while. Supposing that they don't butcher the migration, what Snapjoy service do you love, which wouldn't benefit from a close integration with Dropbox? My only beef with Dropbox is that the gap between free users and paid customers is too wide, price wise. I understand that customers have to subsidize the hordes of freeloaders, but $120 a year for 100G…
Do you think they should start to limit the free tier? I have never paid but do find it useful. On the other hand Google docs which I do pay for covers some of my use cases and I would self host if there was a standard api.
I think they should:
* either lower the entry price and limit the features of the free version if they need to be profitable now, getting more paying customers with a lower ARPU;
* or lower the entry price a lot, lose money and increase both free and paying market-share, if market-share is their current priority.
But the current gap from free to paying is too damn high IMO.