Kicksend (YC S11) Launches To Make Sharing Big Files A Breeze
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Now that's out of the way, I'm wondering what makes me want to use Kicksend over Ge.tt or the half dozen other file transfer services? WTH makes you so special?
EDIT: Upvoting this comment will only encourage me. Stop it.
Most of the work we've done these past few months was more user-experience than technical, and there's a ton more that we're going to improve as we move forward.
Here's why we're special: Our desktop apps are killer. You can drag and drop a big batch of files in, and we take care of the rest. If someone sends you a thousand files, we make sure those are auto-downloaded, and display them in a way that's easy to browse. Since you're on HN and used to things like Dropbox, you might consider this trivial or solved, but our fleshed out desktop experience is highly visual and is something many consumers find very, very appealing.
Our webapp has a 3-step interface for sending files to any email which was a direct result of hundreds of hours of user-testing. If you've never done user-testing, trust us when we tell you that it's usually a humbling affair. The last time we were on HN, our product was terrible compared to what it is now. It's only going to improve from here on out.
The mobile apps that we're planning will change things. To date, nobody has a way to take a video on your phone, send it to a select group of people and have it downloaded on all the devices they have connected.
Our backend infrastructure is a lot more generic than most other file-sharing services, which enable us to cook up slicker features faster than anybody else.
People also seem to like our customer support.
This was long, hope this answered some of your questions. FYI, we're still iterating on everything, everyday based on user feedback.
1) Click on "Select files"
2) Click on the files, press "Open"
Now let's see how many steps your site takes:
1) Click on "Sign up for Kicksend"
2) Fill out the form (equivalent to 20 clicks I'd say)
3) Click on "Sign Up and Continue"
4) Click on "Send files to a friend's email address in the next 5 mins"
4) Click on "Select Files"
5) Fill out the email field
6) Click on "Send Files"
7) The person who received the email, doesn't get the download link, but a "Friend request" link instead. Click.
8) Click on "Approve"
9) Click on "Inbox"
10) Click on the file name
Recently pg announced that the startups would be launching soon and he said/asked:
"Please be nice to them. For you their launch may be 'yet another YC startup,'
but for each individual startup this is their big moment."
I certainly did not say they were friendless. I insinuated that if they believed they were following the community guideline of "being nice" they probably did not have a lot of friends.
Suggesting that probably would have been fine, particularly if you had other interesting comments to add as well; including a personal attack earns downvotes, though; that doesn't add anything.
I do think there are valid questions here like; what is your USP and why did YC invest in this dime-a-dozen concept if you don't have a USP?
You are right, however it is not bad to question a business model or the fact why YC put money in this idea. There are 1000s of these kind of services and a lot of them work really well and are very user friendly.
I do think there are valid questions here like; what is your USP and why did YC invest in this dime-a-dozen concept if you don't have a USP?
Edit: you indicate non-tech usability as USP: a lot of others have that as well as rorrr indicated. He only names a few but there are really 100s or even 1000s that are more user friendly than Kicksend seems to be at this moments. So what is your USP?
Edit2: Too much TL;DR from me I see :) The desktop apps. Ok, going to sign up and check it out :)
Ah! Password picking is good! I get very frustrated when systems don't allow my passwords (and there are tons of sites which don't); my password generator is set to;
And by far most services complain about the length, the type of characters or whatever. +1 :)
Have you ever noticed many/any companies that just disregard the chars after 8 or 12 and or the unicode characters?
This is only because I'm obsessed with such things, not to sway your audience one way or another, or suggest you're wrong but...
I'd actually like to see the data on this. As it stands, opening up my dropbox folder and getting access to the functions I need to share files through the OS native context menu I'm already familiar with (copy public link, for example) seems like it'd be a no brainer. Why add layers of complexity and abstraction through excessive visuals?
I've tried Kicksend and dig it. Though my problem at the moment is determining whether to use Dropbox, Cloud, or Kicksend. I used to send music with it, but now that I use Spotify, that's no longer necessary.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/sendoid-finally-sharing-big...
Why is YC backing what seems like nearly identical startups (at least solving nearly identical problems).
From YC's perspective investing in several startups doing the same (or very similar) things increases the chance that at least one of them might get somewhere with it.
Who owns the files I send?
You do. Your files are your own, we don't see them,
we just deliver them to the people you specify.
By accepting these Terms of Use, you agree that all content ...
is the sole property of Kicksend "While you retain all rights in such communications or
material, you grant us and our agents and affiliates a
non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual, and worldwide right to
copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, translate,
adapt, modify, and otherwise use such material for any
purpose regardless of the form or medium (now known or not
currently known) in which it is used."
I've seen many sites with similar clauses for communications with them -- mainly so they can use your email as a customer testimonial, I believe.
I'm okay with that, but certainly if this applies to the files uploaded, that's a deal-breaker. Facebook's similar clause applying to uploaded content is why I don't upload photos directly, just links to albums I host myself.
Edit: I looked at the terms more closely. Those sections just need to be rewritten; they seem to be cobbled together and not quite regularized to make sense.
6. Intellectual Property Information: defines "content" to include "message boards, chat, and other original content", then (huh) has this: "all content presented to you on this site is protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents or other proprietary rights and laws, and is the sole property of Kicksend, Inc. and/or its Affiliates." Well, no, that's a direct contradiction with the definition of content, especially since I assume people can share public domain material.
7. Unauthorized Use of Materials: much of this seems like a cut/paste out of terms I've seen referring to messages that users submit to a company (saw something like this on an Adobe site) -- e.g., feature ideas that you "transmit to us", NOT original or public domain content uploaded to a sharing service. These terms are a bit scary in the current context.
HTH.
There seems to be a wee bit of an adverse selection problem with the people who are likely to be customers for this.
PS. Can I ask you to stop using country-specific slang like "a wee bit" on HN?
And it's not really relevant, but since it's probably the part you're getting downvoted for, I figure I should explain: Your objection to "a wee bit" seems really weird. It's not particularly region-specific anymore — my mom from Mississippi uses it — and even if it were, it's not hard to grasp the meaning. I can't think of any good reason to avoid it.
As for the parent above, if an easy USB-USB device that was easy and existed, I'd buy it. It isn't just movies anymore, it is also about giving grandma the HD video of her granddaughter's dance recital as easy and quickly as possible.
Well, I guess using "wee" is more common than I thought, however I would still prefer to stick to standard english whereever possible.
Let me introduce you to hotfile.com, megashare.com, duckload.com, fileserve.com, filesonic.com.
All of these people makes money of pirates by charging for downloads. They can do this because it is convenient and easy for people to download through them.
So yes, you can make money selling to pirates.
I know my way around computers, so I can set up the FTP server on my wife's MacBook Air (for example), but it might be trickier for a "regular" person to do it.
Well, on second thought -- thumb drives are pretty big and pretty cheap nowadays. It'd be tough to sell two USB devices for sharing data when someone can just buy, say, a 32 GB thumb drive for $30.
Seems like a safer bet to go after a demographic that you know typically pays for things.
This feels on the surface like we're deep into the sort of "feature as startup" territory that marked the worst excesses of the last dot com boom.
Am I wrong? What makes this a big enough potential that it is in YC?
It doesn't look as though Kicksend is useful for URL-shortening as well, which CloudApp makes dead simple.
I am curious, though, to see if/how the guys at CloudApp respond to this...
"While you retain all rights in such communications or
material, you grant us and our agents and affiliates a
non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual, and worldwide right to
copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, translate,
adapt, modify, and otherwise use such material for any
purpose regardless of the form or medium (now known or not
currently known) in which it is used."
PS Your lawyers did a poor cut and paste job on the terms of use page.
There is some unicode conversion problems:
"Users Materials" (this is not the only time but you paid them not me)
The terms of use mentions sections named "Use of Your Materials" and "Users Materials" however neither of these sections actually exists.
Ge.tt is more realtime! You get the link even before your file is completely uploaded. You can share that link while things are still being uploaded.
And here is the reason why I did not sign up - You ask me to sign up. You ask my friend to sign up. I still get spams from a million other similar services (YouSendIt, for eg.) who don't stop spamming me no matter what I do. When a file sharing service asks me to sign up, I see a big red flag instead of a homepage.
It sounds like a mispronounced "quicksand", a meaningless mash of two words. Neither the noun+verb nor the verb+verb interpretations are grammatically sensible, and the verb+noun meaning just doesn't feel right.
As a frequent user of these services, I admit the variety is a bit dizzying at times. But I welcome all the competition (and wonder what market consolidation will look like down the line...)
Kicksend is kind of okay too i guess, but thanks for submitting this, i had no idea about ge.tt!
The dark grey top-nav is very Google 2011.