Dropbox Versus The World • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#41

Post by sireat » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 10:00 AM UTC

inevrela wrote: post #12

Proud user of Dropbox, lot of people around me using it as well, even received 50gb of storage with my S3. I guess I know what it does, but thinking about Business version - anyone here with any cons? Especially in terms of sharing stuff in/out of the company?

Why would you be a proud user? User perhaps, but proud of using such a service?

I am an ashamed user of Dropbox still (see drop-dropbox someone posted below), because of inertia.

I know that that there is a high probability any three letter agency can access my unencrypted (and probably encrypted) data at Dropbox, but I suppose it is no worse than at Google Drive

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#42

Post by bane » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 11:03 AM UTC

arfar wrote: post #24

bane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting a bit meta https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292110

Are you quoting yourself, quoting yourself?

Pretty much :)

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#43

Post by Angostura » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 12:49 PM UTC

shanemhansen wrote: post #21

arikrak wrote: post #7

I only started the article, but it's too over-the-top to continue. I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that? > Dropbox has the distinction of being the only cloud service—and perhaps the only startup—ever to compete simultaneously against Apple ($748 billion market cap), Google ($369 billion), Microsoft ($357 billion), Amazon ($173 billion), and Tencent ($160 billion). > Unlike his amply finan…

It's called native advertising and unfortunately it's what publications are betting on to survive in an era of ad blockers.

So you're saying that Dropbox paid Fastcompany to run this piece?

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#44

Post by shanemhansen » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #43

shanemhansen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called native advertising and unfortunately it's what publications are betting on to survive in an era of ad blockers.

So you're saying that Dropbox paid Fastcompany to run this piece?

I'm not saying Dropbox paid Fastcompany to run this piece. I was responding to: "I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that?".

Native advertising is a thing, one I wasn't aware of until recently.

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#45

Post by shostack » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

shanemhansen wrote: post #21

arikrak wrote: post #7

I only started the article, but it's too over-the-top to continue. I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that? > Dropbox has the distinction of being the only cloud service—and perhaps the only startup—ever to compete simultaneously against Apple ($748 billion market cap), Google ($369 billion), Microsoft ($357 billion), Amazon ($173 billion), and Tencent ($160 billion). > Unlike his amply finan…

It's called native advertising and unfortunately it's what publications are betting on to survive in an era of ad blockers.

On legit publications, native advertising simply means an ad unit that is tailored to fit the site design/flow or quite often a more editorially formatted ad unit. However it will always have some sort of ad indicator or the company would lose the trust of their readers.

Not saying press for dollars doesn't happen, but native advertising is something very specific. I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with the IAB's definition and recommended guidelines[1]. Large online brands follow these because they want to say they are IAB compliant for brand conscious advertisers with big media budgets.

[1] http://www.iab.net/nativeadvertising

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#46

Post by dguaraglia » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 5:04 PM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #28

dguaraglia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is purely a PR piece. I'd guess there's not much editing going on, so claims like that will go through to the reader as long as they make it through Dropbox's PR (which is originating the piece to begin with.) So, yeah, those are some extraordinary claims there, and nobody's going to check on them. Journalism is mostly dead in this country (except for some rare exceptions.)

A HNer made this same point in a different thread today. The child comment pointed out that (i'm paraphrasing) "people don't pay for journalism or content, so the only way to monetize it is as a vehicle to drive traffic and push ads.

Absolutely. My thinking is the problem in today's world, specially on the web, is that you can't tie people down to consume the advertisement, so you have to fool them into consuming it.

In the good ole' days of pre-cable/pre-TiVo TV, people who wanted to watch a program would have to sit through the ads because they didn't know when the next segment of the show would start. Websites can't constrain you the same way because you are free to take an action against the ad: close the tab, change tabs, install an ad-blocker.

So what's the solution? You mask ads as content. You get a press release from a company, do some basic editing on it so it doesn't look exactly the same as in the other 50 or so blogs affiliated with the PR company, and you are good to go. You get paid, the client company gets good publicity and the PR company gets their slice. The consumer is none-the-wiser and thinks s/he got something for their time. Win/win/win/kinda-lose.