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.
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?
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 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?
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'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.