Simple and fast file sharing with ge.tt | Hacker News Reader

Simple and fast file sharing with ge.tt

ge.tt

42 pointsdanielh28 comments

Very convenient service. Just works!

Curious about business model. I'm sure that services like rapidshare could be profitable (bad interface, worsen service for free users etc), but it not so clear how to get profitable such service with so strait forward interface.

Other file-sharing service with simple interface that I've tried to use was filesavr.com but after some time it became very unstable.

We have some secrets hidden up our sleeves when it comes to the business model ;) In two weeks we'll have more info for you.

They make a big deal about saving you time because you have "better things to do", but then their "Tell me more" presentation wastes loads of your time making you click multiple times without actually telling you anything of substance!

(co-founder here)

Yeah, we could do SO much with that presentation. It was put together very fast because people didn't understand what we do. And you know what? They still don't :) We're working on it as we speak, and sometime next week we're presenting a completely different front page.

As a test to what we do, try sharing 30 random audio and video files. Then immediately open the Ge.tt link in another browser (or another computer). You can choose any file you want and start streaming or downloading the file. It does not need to be uploaded first. Also, does not need flash or java.

You guys should absolutely explain that. It would help, as well, to explain that you can share multiple files in a single URL. I'm writing up ge.tt on The Next Web right now. Any chance you guys have a monetization plan? If you don't want to share it here, email me quickly please - brad@thenextweb.com

I'll send you an email.

A question about how this works, as well. Does it essentially then create a peer-to-peer transfer, running through ge.tt's server as a type of proxy?

Please also make your "Tell me more" presentation HTML rather than Flash.

Agreed. We'll change a lot in about two weeks, so stay tuned :)

Even after seeing "Tell me more" flash, I don't think people will still be able to appreciate all your services. Maybe you can come up with some promotional videos on the line of 'google voice', 'google priority inbox'(i know, its all google, but they make their videos really good).

I agree.

Actually, a few days ago I presented Ge.tt for an event called Demoday. With a small demo, which wasn't more than a screencast, they all seemed to get it (pun intended) very fast. And the feedback was extremely good. So, for a starter we'll probably do just that - a screencast.

Then we can always figure out something fancy :)

Very nice!

One little thing: On the right sidebar, before your first upload, it says:

  Free account 
  Shares live longer
  Live statistics
  create account

I'm pretty sure that is supposed to mean that shares live longer and you get live statistics if you have an account, but I think it reads the other way around: Free account means that your shares lives longer.

You mean that people don't associate the "live longer, live sta..." with creating an account or how do you mean?

Yes. To be precise - I didn't visually connect them. The following text layout:

  Free account 
  X
  Y
  create account

(especially with the design on ge.tt) looks to me like: "Free account has feature X and Y - create an account to remove these". Looking at the values for X and Y, that couldn't be what you meant, but it took a second for me to realize. Maybe it's just me...

(I like the text better once you've uploaded something. Then there is a header with "Create an account and get access to:")

Ahh, hehe, never thought about it like that :) I see what you mean.

We'll update the front page in a not so long time, and then we'll think more about it. To be honest we think that we need to work on being more to the point. Which is what we're doing now.

Mac users, it seems to me, wouldn't get any use out of this. Cloud App does the same thing but is on my local machine so I don't have to go to a website. Could be handy for Windows and Linux users I suppose. Am I missing a bigger picture?

I believe you are. Its not backup, its sharing. One stop file sharing versus having to choose sharing sites by file type e.g.[picture:twitpic,video:twitvid,vid-pic:flickr,pdf:scribid,slide:slideshare,...]

Yeah. Completely fair. I wrote that comment at a first blush. After digging in for a minute, ge.tt is slick.

I used drop.io on occasion - although their free size limit was a little too small. Having unlimited, or as the terms of service say 2gb makes this way more useful.

Well done!

How about adding drag/drop mechanism for browsers that supports it? That will be really convenient because I can just drag the files and move on.

We actually have that already :)

At one we had it announced on the page, but then people complained that they couldn't do it in their browser - because they used one that didn't support it. We'll probably put it back in somehow. We'll think about it.

I've used script.aculo.us and had it work in Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome; christopherwoodall.com/youtube.

JQuery also has a Drag-and-Drop feature.

Only one missing... Those were the users complaining.

You need to fallback into regular file select if the browser doesn't support it. :)

Any chance we could have this through https? Encrypting the download link is always a good idea.

The security is being reworked and rethought and https would most likely be implemented soon. We've looked into it already so it's not entirely new to us.

everything is shared under the ge.tt (domain's root name can't be a CNAME). you obviously think you won't need a content delivery network at scale, do you?

We've been working a lot with the scaling technique, and even though we are doing ok for now, we're reworking a lot of the backend. Not sure when, but it'll be rolled out.

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