New Rule: Don’t launch a storage service if you’re going to close down within a year. | Hacker News Reader

New Rule: Don’t launch a storage service if you’re going to close down within a year.

blog.box.net

23 pointspeter12317 comments

Something that the author brushes over is that the other two services that closed their doors -- Xdrive and Briefcase -- are over ten years old.

When HP closes a service after a year, maybe they really just don't get it.

When AOL and Yahoo close 10-year-old services... Well, it's not necessarily a good sign for box.net that the big players in their niche have decided it's non-viable after a decade-long trial period.

Not worthwhile for AOL and Yahoo is very different from non-viable. They might not have the resources to dedicate to sustaining it. It might not fit with their corporate strategy or vision. Maybe it makes money, but just not enough to justify their manpower.

If these sites were viable, but not a "fit," then we would be hearing about AOL and Yahoo selling the properties, not closing them down.

What would they sell?

The engineering team they need for other projects?

The technology which several startups have proven is easily recreated?

They aren't going to sell part of the AOL or Yahoo brand, so they could only really sell it if it had a unique name with which to preserve the user base under.

I dunno, the basic math shows you can charge people for storage and bandwidth and you can make money on top of it. I wouldn't right this product off yet.

Pardon me for stating the obvious, because nobody has yet: Nobody PLANS to close down within a year.

If you really want to give customers confidence that you're going to be around for the long run, you have to charge a lot of money. More than the competition. That's the only way to demonstrate that your business is viable.

If you have over a year of runway it's very unlikely that you'll close down within a year.

well, they do charge more than the competition ;)

Meh, not much substance here. A bit of marketing speak, "razor-focused" etc.

I wouldn't mind some details about how they excel, why they built those features in, when they realized each feature was the next critical step, etc. That would make for interesting reading, and I assume "Aaron Levie, CEO and Co-Founder of Box.net" has knowledge to explain it all.

Here's hoping we get to read about that next!

True, to the HN crowd, there's not much substance, as we want details. But for the average consumer of the types of services Box.net is offering, this seems like a great marketing move to me.

Under no circumstances is the average consumer going to believe that "box.net" is a safer bet than HP, even if that is in fact the case.

Excellent point. I should start thinking through these comments...

tptacek makes a good point, as do you ryan. I suppose I had assumed we were the target for this post, not "the average consumer".

If I was right, I think my point stands. If not, tptacek's likely right, though perhaps it may lay the seeds of confidence in box's readership.

The actual headline of this article seems as if it should be: "New Rule: Online storage alone is insufficient for an online storage venture to succeed".

Just skimming the headline, I read that as Box.net was going down. After reading the article I of course saw that Box.net was criticizing others for going down. However, I have to wonder if the confusion of the blog post's title hurts their credibility more than than the article helps it.

Whats with the link on the logo, its href is {#http_root#}

Must be a templating system glitch.

Oh boy, somebody is going to eat his own words.

That post will be frozen in time till the day they close shop, then it will haunt him for the rest of his life.

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