Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t | Hacker News Reader

Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t

wetzler.me

207 pointssporkbomb69 comments

Looking at products like Dropbox and Evernote, not to mention everything going on with iPhone/Android apps, I can't help but thing that they provide a bit of a counter to the conventional wisdom that native "fat clients" are dead. The people I know who use Dropbox basically never use the Dropbox website except to sign up and to download the client. The client is the magic, not the website.

It makes me wonder what other services might benefit from native clients....

We've used a native client for many years and it served us well, only when we were able to give the users a comparable experience with just the browser did we make the switch. Even today there are still plenty of people that use the installed software, we've done what we could to make it backwards compatible.

Without the website though to compliment it dropbox would have been less valuable to me, although still the best syncing solution. There have been many times at uni or at someones house where the website interface has come in very handy.

I'm certainly not doubting that not having a website at all would be a loss. It just fascinates me how much of a gain it is for some services to have a great local client.

Dropbox was a YC company, which meant they had quite a bit of free press and access to a lot of valley connections. I would imagine that had a lot to do with their success.

I'm sure it didn't hurt them but their execution to date has been impeccable.

One thing has popped up recently: Dropbox relies on the urls to folders in 'boxes' that are shared to remain secret, nothing stops google from indexing the contents once the location is known, there is no 'robots.txt' that instructs google not to peek there.

This could lead to a lot of people being highly surprised that the contents of their secret stash are suddenly open to the portion of the population that uses google.

The problem is that it's not just the users that nominally own the data that control this, basically everybody that you share that url with can 'leak' it to google, either by using a toolbar or by posting it on some webpage. After that it's fair game.

To see this for yourself:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=a+site...

According to dropbox support this is by design, but I can still see how some people might be very surprised by this.

edited for clarity, thanks thomaswmeyer.

This is only for content that's explicitly placed in your "Public" folder, not for anywhere else in your Dropbox.

Yes, hence the 'that are not shielded'

I think it seemed that you were trying to imply the dropbox's content (not just the public portion) would be visible to anyone.

I am glad this was clarified.

No, definitely not, it's only the public folders and not the rest.

'not shielded': implies that one has to do extra work to shield those. Default is not secure scenario.

'public folder': implies one has to do extra work to make those files public. Default is not public.

I was wondering which one describes Dropbox situation correctly.

Then no one should think it's such a "secret stash", should they? I think using this term is what confused people.

Indeed it works. I switched the search term to a file name present in my shared folder and there it was.

Pretty important point. Most of the people on the East Coast I know who could use Syncplicity have never heard about it.

Notice this too, on the marketing front:

we had issues getting the press excited at launch. We built a fantastic Windows client. 3 years ago, everyone was running Windows. We were so excited to show the press, yet they all had Macs. Walt Mossberg wouldn't write about our product because it was PC only. Months after we hired our PR agency, we found out that they had never even used our product... because they too only had Macs. It's pretty hard to pitch a service when you haven't used it.*

I'm surprised: I could see a fantastic Windows client being okay before 2004 or so (this might be because I got a PowerBook in 2004, but roll with it). By three years ago the return of the Mac was obvious to pretty much everybody, especially people who care about computing. The people who're running tech blogs, writing forum posts, and so on are disproportionately Mac users.

(http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-tha...)

This is an interesting point on knowing your audience. In this case, the audience was small but influential.

One of the quora comments notes the difference between B2C and B2B.

B2B needs lots of features, a great sales team, and can be Windows only.

B2C needs a great simple UI (which may one day have lots of power features tucked away, hopefullly after A/B testing), lots of press, and multi-platform is a big plus.

How do you even pronounce syncplicity? Dropbox is a nobrainer in just about every language that is somewhat relevant on the internet for commercial reasons, that alone would give them an edge.

Sycn?what? Oh, never mind, I'll just use dropbox.

Cutesy names are rarely worth the downside. Keep it short, simple, easy to spell and pronounceable in an un-ambiguous way.

Or you'll never even get to the point where you have to worry about how your competitor is doing in terms of pricing or features.

I'll download anything with a crappy name as long as the functionality is there. I really couldn't care less.

Do I really think Apple is a great name for a computer manufacturer? Definitely not on the surface. But they ran with it and now it's accepted as one of the strongest brands on the planet.

Hard to find a more universally understood symbol in the western world other than the cross (and that's a bit much for a computer company). I think it was an excellent choice.

> Hard to find a more universally understood symbol in the western world [...]

Sun!

Good one! I totally dropped the ball there, I searched for things too close to home :)

I don't really see how the success of `Apple' contradicts " Keep it short, simple, easy to spell and pronounceable in an un-ambiguous way."

It's better than FruitOfTheTreeOfKnowledgeOfGoodAndEvil2000.biz

The name "Syncplicity" is also ironic because the co-founder said part of their failure was making their product too complicated.

This guy already said it best: http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-tha...

Thanks for linking to the original.

There's some real gems in here from the founder of Syncplicity.

For instance, not having a Mac client meant that the tech press wouldn't touch it. Then, they wouldn't write about it. That's pretty enlightening.

It is a little contradiction to the statement "My philosophy is that they're right if their feature request is right only if it works for 80% of your customers.".

Apparently sometimes a small minority of customers still can make all the difference.

I think it's important to distinguish "platform compatibility" from the kinds of feature requests he's talking about, because I don't think the take home lesson is necessarily "cater to some minorities' requests".

Adding Mac support didn't make DropBox any more complicated for the end user -- there were no new corner cases or potential conflict scenarios, no new steps in the setup, no additional configuration complexity, basically no cost at all in terms of end-user mental load in order to extend their product beyond the Windows platform and reach some important taste-makers.

This is distinct from the end user confusion created by adding, say, multiple folder support or any of the other complex features and configuration options that users will clamour for. When you don't carefully curate those kinds of features, you end up sticking your users in tyranny-of-choice territory in a way that simply broadening your platform support doesn't.

Adding Mac support didn't make DropBox any more complicated for the end user.

I suspect that's not strictly true. Mac OS X and Windows file systems are subtly different in features (hard/soft links, aliases, .lnk files; files with multiple streams; various Finder annotations to files), and I suspect that once you sync to both Windows and Mac you will run into weird issues. Of course, syncing to multiple platforms is probably only something "power users" would do, and they can tolerate some teething problems.

Macs are a small minority of the total computer market. They're a huge percentage of the trailing edge, however--the tech-savvy people who are willing to try a new service like Dropbox or Syncplicity.

Leaving out Mac support in this case is like opening a coffee shop that sells $4 lattes, but can only be reached by people driving beat-up old Fords and Chevys.

Macs are a small minority of the total computer market. They're a huge percentage of the trailing edge, however--the tech-savvy people who are willing to try a new service like Dropbox or Syncplicity.

I agree with your first paragraph but would note that I think you're shooting for "Leading edge" rather than "trailing edge."

I think this dovetails nicely with Mark Suster's article from awhile back: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/03/22/6-tips-to-buil...

Basically, active engagement with journalists is key to getting the right press, especially in a competitive market.

A similar thing happened with a famous Word Processor not having a word count.

The designers found that nobody used word count - except for Journalists. Guess who write reviews of new word processors?

What? How can that be true? Were you ever a student?

Also, imho, having a Linux client early helped quite a bit with gaining street credibility amongst hackers/nerds. I know this is the reason I started using it instead of competing services.

The top comment there doesn't seem insightful at all, especially when compared to the next comment from the Syncplicity founder. For instance:

No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs.

Apparently every time somebody at Dropbox suggested more features, he was simply told to "shut up." It sounds like the Dropbox guys got it right simply by being not retarded, like the commenter but unlike any of their competitors. Not really; according to the Syncplicity guy, Dropbox built multi-folding syncing and discarded it after they realized they couldn't make it simple enough for users. The lesson is not to "shut up" and listen to people who know what they're doing; the lesson is to design your UI carefully and pay close attention to how users actually use your product.

No, shut up. Most of the world doesn't sit in front of their browser all day. If they do, it is IE 6 at work that they are not allowed to upgrade.

As the Syncplicity founder pointed out, it was more important to get coverage from tech journalists using Macs. (After all, if folks are stuck with IE6 and aren't able to install Firefox, how are they going to install Dropbox?)

People probably also had an easier time spelling 'Dropbox', than they did remembering 'Syncplicity'.

'Dropbox' is one of the best product names I've ever heard. Someone mentioned it to me once and I instantly knew exactly what it must be, and remembered it forever.

Rapidshare was pretty good too (as a name, the service sucks) and it surprises me that they never managed to expand in to dropbox's territory.

And with public shared folders dropbox is definitely expanding in to theirs.

There is a lot of money in what RapidShare do.

I was working for a company in the same field which was doing maybe a tenth of the traffic RapidShare and we got a cash offer well into eight figures. This was a company with four employees and zero funding.

And for us on the bleeding edge, spelling 'getdropbox'

Nowadays, users are using Google instead of typing URLs. Even if they know they URL.

Indeed. My work's web server logs show that the number one referrer is a Google search for the full URL of the site.

"Dropbox limited its feature set on purpose. It had one folder and that folder always synced without any issues -- it was magic. Syncplicity could sync every folder on your computer until you hit our quota."

I think I had started to use Dropbox because of its popularity on LifeHacker and other sites. One of my first complaints was that I was required to use a single "My Dropbox" folder instead of being able to use my own folder structure. However, I quickly adapted to the Dropbox model and realized that for every computer that's connected to Dropbox, everything that's in the Dropbox folder gets synchronized and everything that is not in the Dropbox folder is not. Its simplicity is probably the reason why I am still using it.

This reminds me of something I read earlier:

After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved.

Anyone else reminded of the other article, "How Steve Jobs 'out-Japanned' Japan"?: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/28/... :

Jobs's immersion in Zen and passion for design almost certainly exposed him to the concept of ma, a central pillar of traditional Japanese aesthetics. Like many idioms relating to the intimate aspects of how a culture sees the world, it's nearly impossible to accurately explain -- it's variously translated as "void," "space" or "interval" -- but it essentially describes how emptiness interacts with form, and how absence shapes substance. If someone were to ask you what makes a ring a meaningful object -- the circle of metal it consists of, or the emptiness that that metal encompasses? -- and you were to respond "both," you've gotten as close to ma as the clumsy instrument of English allows.

While Jobs has never invoked the term in public -- one of the aspects of his genius is the ability to keep even his most esoteric assertions in the realm of the instantly accessible -- ma is at the core of the Jobsian way. And Jobs' single-minded adherence to this idiosyncratically Japanese principle is, ironically, what has allowed Apple to compete with and beat Japan's technology titans -- most notably the company that for the past four decades dominated the world of consumer electronics: Sony.

This is an interesting concept. Anyone have further reading material on this Zen aesthetics / ma thing? Googling these words is leading me to many yoga shops in Massachusetts ;)

I'll be glad when the fad of drop-shadowing body text to look vaguely "engraved" passes. Thanks, Readability...

No one posted the funniest comment in the Quora thread, from Dropbox founder Drew Houston:

> http://www.zumsteg.net/2009/03/08/further-comparison-of-drop...

> (kidding -- mostly)

> After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved.

When I can't get something right, I keep on trying. Maybe not always a good idea.

> When I can't get something right, I keep on trying. Maybe not always a good idea.

I'd say it's a good idea, as long as it's core to what you're doing... if in the case of Dropbox, it was an ancillary feature, it's good to cut your losses.

If it's part of your core business model - get it right.

As they say, keep it simple, stupid.

To be fair, most companies that complicate their feature set don't do it because they enjoy writing more code. It's just difficult to focus on your core competency when a simple product sounds boring on paper. It's so much harder to pitch to a VC or potential employee. Who wants to support a product that's just going to sync one folder instead of your entire system? But it's always the companies that manage to make it through that stage that succeed.

I nodded vigorously through every sentence of your comment. Well done, and good to see you're a computer scientist and didn't have to rely on jargon to make your point.

It's so easy to overlook the benefits of staying obsessively focused.

Quickly though, almost in your back, each single bit/feature/line of code added to the mix multiplies with the others, and it's over already.

Non-programmers tend to think that adding a software feature is akin to adding on to a house. Sure, it take some effort and money, but the resulting house is surely better, right? (This isn't always true, of course, but still)

In reality, adding a software feature is often like adding onto a house in the center of it, expanding the rest of the house around it to make room. Suddenly the job looks a lot tougher.

Or perhaps if you told them, it's like adding scenes to a film, they'd understand. There's a reason for deleted scenes.

How about "it's like if they took [your favorite sport] and added a new rule to it. Imagine how much all the theory, leagues, player valuations, etc. would all change."

Or slightly more precise, but less accessible—"what if your favorite fighting game got a new character? What if your favorite MMO got a new class?"

It's very simple: it Just Worked, and it was Easy. Those two things combined to make it feel like magic.

The founder of Syncplicity (even the name sounds complex!) said it best:

"In the end, it really came down to one incredibly genius idea: Dropbox limited its feature set on purpose. It had one folder and that folder always synced without any issues -- it was magic. Syncplicity could sync every folder on your computer until you hit our quota. (Unfortunately, that feature was used to synchronize C:\Windows\ for dozens of users -- doh!) Our company had too many features and this created confusion amongst our customer base. This in turn led to enough customer support issues that we couldn't innovate on the product, we were too busy fixing things.

I started using Syncplicity. The reliability of the service was very poor in the beginning (I remember a week long down time) and I seem to remember some issues getting a computer to Sync again when it is reformatted and given the same computer name. The issues were enough to move me to Sugar Sync where I was a paying customer for 12 months. Their service was satisfactory but they removed my plan (10Gb for $25) from their offerings. I moved to Dropbox where I have 6gb for free. Not sure how Dropbox is making money (all the people I know and have referred are free users) but I will enjoy it while it lasts. Certainly Dropbox is providing the best service of the three.

I think the single folder is that killer feature that certainly won them the market share. It's entry point is incredibly simple yet for the more technically inclined we can simply setup symbolic links to create the multi folder functionality.

Yet again someone showing how important it is to stay simple.

I can no longer count the number of companies I've talked to who imploded under the weight of their own features.

Perhaps if you just focused on the counting instead of all the other stuff you're doing...?

Insync does the same but for you MS Office docs; syncs them to Google Docs automatically :-)

http://insyncHQ.com

People can edit Google Docs with Office, and Office with Docs. No need to choose one.

This is the similar kind of advice that those behind 37 Signals give in their book Rework http://amzn.to/hkrGuU

Dropbox is such a great name for the service, much better than Syncplicity. I think that might have facilitated their success.

marketing, marketing, and marketing.

I use dropbox forever, was in the closed beta, and at that time I was using win. And until today I never heard about syncplicity, even though I know and tried similar services.

It's not about features, platforms, or whatever. I've seen the worst product succeed only because of marketing.

sinkplisitie is harderer to spell.

I didn't know about Sugar Sync when I was sucked in to Dropbox hype. I have changed my mind.

The answer is in the names. People want a dropbox - a place to drop stuff. The don't want simple syncing. Syncing is part of the implementation of sharing a "drop box." Syncplicity the name but also the philosophy - the product was designed around syncing instead of an actual user need.

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