DropBox grows like weed. Reaches 2 million users. | Hacker News Reader

DropBox grows like weed. Reaches 2 million users.

techcrunch.com

129 pointsrokhayakebe88 comments

You know what's really cool about this? Microsoft and Apple have both taken stabs at this problem multiple times. The companies that make the operating systems on about 99% of PCs have both tried this. They've had some success at it, but it's never been a killer app or a feature that people rave about.

Knowing that, dhouston still created DropBox. He did a fantastic job. He knocked it out of the park. Now 2 million people have used the thing and he's well on his way to building a very successful business with it.

Don't let the big guys scare you.

I suspect people underestimate how successful Microsoft and Apple have been with their competitive services.

Care to elaborate ?

I think what he's getting at is that if Microsoft has a similar product and they gained 2 million users, it would not be seen as impressive, because that is still far less than 1% of all Windows users.

So, while Microsoft may have a competing product with many millions of users, at their scale it doesn't get the same recognition as a startup gaining 2 million users.

Anecdotally, I see FolderShare quite widely used. I have no idea how number of users compares to DropBox though.

FolderShare was acquired. I don't know if Microsoft has done a terrible lot with the program since the acquisition to be able to claim the success as its own.

Actually, the closest Microsoft equivalent is Live Mesh.

Foldershare is now known as windows live sync.

(Just) Curios why you point out the technical angle of their achievement but don't mention aferdowsi. Doesn't he deserve any credit as the CTO?

I wasn't attempting to dole out credit. I was highlighting the fact that dhouston was brave enough to start DropBox in the face of circumstances that would probably have deterred many of us.

The whole team deserves a ton of credit for what they've accomplished.

my cofounder arash and team definitely deserve more credit than i do.

and _that_ is why you are so good

I'm a customer. it's indispensable.

Agreed. I actually got introduced to it by a client who you wouldn't expect to use a startup's product. Fastest I've ever gone from free account to paying customer.

I'm not a customer yet but I agree on it being indispensable. It'll be an easy decision to pay once I run out of disk space. There aren't many products which I actively promote to my friends, but dropbox is one of them (the extra space for referrals helps too).

I'd love to know what percentage of their new users come from their affiliate program:

https://www.getdropbox.com/affiliates

Any info on how many are at $10 and $20? I love it, but I'm a freeloader.

They should do all they can to buy http://dropbox.com/

Anything that scores me points with my wife gets my $$$.

When my wife called me and said, "Honey, I love dropbox" I figured this team had hit a homerun. I'd been pushing a backup/network solution for her for a few years because of various harddrive failures and file loss debacles, but only dropbox dropped in and "just worked" for her - she's the perfect candidate for dropbox, moving between multiple laptops and computer labs for document editing and statistics programming.

Good luck to the team there and many thanks. I hope you all get filthy rich. Seriously.

I'm one of the 1 million users whose accounts are dormant.

I love the product, but it bothers me that it's not open source. (Not their problem or anyone else's, but I prefer not to use close-source software if I can help it.)

Also, after I don't know how long, the whole "the API is around the corner" thing began to feel like a shell game.

It's two years old. Give them time, they're evolving their site constantly. Also, I don't think you know what a shell game is.

I love the product, but it bothers me that it's not open source. (Not their problem or anyone else's, but I prefer not to use close-source software if I can help it.)

They created one of the fastest and best methods of syncing there is, maybe the best one if simply being intuitive counts. They make their money by licensing it to you. How would you take that and open-source it without killing dhouston's method of making a living?

Also: What's this about not liking closed-source? That's like saying you dislike songs that you can't download as individual tracks. Maybe it's cool that some things are broken down and easy to tinker with, but it's silly to turn that into disliking the ones you can't break.

> Also, I don't think you know what a shell game is.

If my imprecision bothers you, feel free to s/con game/shell game/.

>Also: What's this about not liking closed-source? That's like saying you dislike songs that you can't download as individual tracks. Maybe it's cool that some things are broken down and easy to tinker with, but it's silly to turn that into disliking the ones you can't break.

I don't think you know what the value of free and open software is. It has nothing to do with wanting things "you can break." I have no idea how you make that leap (open source == breakable?). I would add that a closed source application built (as far as I've read) on open source pieces (SVN? Python? Rsync?) is especially off-putting to me.

To clarify one other point. Ubuntu has already reverse-engineered Dropbox (as Ubuntu One), so if Dropbox's profit relies on their having the sole access to the magic formula, it's already too late. Anything can be (and generally will be) reverse engineered. I don't think that closing off the source is a royal road to success.

If my imprecision bothers you, feel free to s/con game/shell game/.

Your imprecision, as you call it, is that you are associating Dropbox saying they're working on an API with a shady person trying to steal your money. Unless you've paid them for an API that you didn't receive, they haven't conned you.

I don't think you know what the value of free and open software is.

I'll hazard a guess: It's free, and also anybody's able to improve it if they want. I've only got five years' experience with open source, though, so perhaps I'm still an amateur at this.

So they use Dropbox's exact code? Or are you saying that they saw what Dropbox did and decided to copy it? Because that's not reverse engineering.

Funny story: Once upon a time I thought that open source would lead to everything getting better. I thought Firefox, for instance, would just continue to be an unstoppable beast because, after all, anybody who wanted to could make it do anything any other browser did. Then I realized Firefox was slow and ugly on the Mac, moved to the closed-source Safari, and enjoy its incredibly sleek design. It was around the time I stopped using Ubuntu because I realized the closed-source OS X was better. Now that Windows 7 is spreading, I think Ubuntu's dropped to my third-favorite OS.

The problem with your line of thinking is that open source doesn't pay. The best people in certain fields, meanwhile, only work for money, and occasionally only for large gobs of money. That includes interface designers, and a lot of the people who work on fixing the ugly problems that nobody really likes working on. So open source's downfall is that it can't compete with the quality and focus of closed-source. It's the problem with democracy, so to speak.

I like open source for some things. I still haven't found an open-source application that's as cutting-edge as its closed equivalents. Even Quicksilver left me dissatisfied until I discovered the Google-sponsored Quick Search Box.

Safari is based on the KDE browser's open source rendering engine, however. I don't know how much of it is left but certainly it was a huge boon for them -- and later Google -- to start with a highly standards-compliant and open code base.

I've found the best OS projects are system libraries and utilities and tools where the developer is also the end user. The more UI is piled up, the more non-developer involvement is needed the worse it gets. The worst are open source games; nothing good since Nethack.

+1.

One caveat: building motivated teams is hard, even if money does seem to be in the mix.

Motivated teams are a confounding factor in startups, I think. A common reason for starting a startup is 'independence' which I take to mean 'choosing who I work with'. But I have no confidence whatsoever that I can do a better job if I take on that infrastructural task. Perhaps it is under-estimated?

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I upvoted it because I agree with "The problem with your line of thinking is that open source [usually] doesn't pay. The best people in certain fields, meanwhile, only work for money, and occasionally only for large gobs of money", among other reasons.

I realize Dropbox might be able to open source their client without significant risk, but why take any unnecessary risks at this point? There's no reason to. Or maybe Dropbox feels that their source code's quality is nasty, and don't want to put in the effort to clean it up before open sourcing it.

It's solely the decision of Dropbox whether the Dropbox client is open sourced, and they should not be blamed for deciding against it.

There are lots of pro-open source people, and lots of people who still need convincing. I don't think we can easily be sorted as a community into any category beyond "ambitious". All other traits are up for grabs.

To clarify one other point. Ubuntu has already reverse-engineered Dropbox (as Ubuntu One)

Having an automated sync of folders with the cloud is hardly rocket science. Dropbox packaged it up nicely but I doubt Ubu' really reverse engineered it they more likely started with something like rsync or unison and made a nice clean and simple frontend modeled on the simplicity of Dropbox.

Do you not see how useful it would be for the client-side to be open source? Most of Dropbox's value lies in their servers, especially the web interface, but they've stumbled a bit on the client-side.

How so? It's a folder that syncs. I can't think of how to improve that. Perhaps add versioning? But that's not exactly an essential.

Custom ignore files, for one. I don't need it to sync .git, .swp, etc. It's an amazing service as-is, but it can be better (for power users, anyway).

I would love to be able to leave some folders in the cloud on some machines. My laptop has a small hdd... Overall I love Dropbox, but I am confident it can and will improve.

Create a second account just for the laptop and set up a shared folder between the two accounts. Put all the files you want on the laptop in the shared folder.

That kind of scheme unfortunately takes most of the ease of painless syncing away...

Good idea. Not sure I can stay under the free limit or want to pay for a second account, but if I can that will do it.

The one thing I want is to be able to turn certain folders off/on depending on the machine.

This is the only feature at the moment that i need which dropbox is lacking. Makes it difficult to use Dropbox in more than one environment such as work versus school when everything is synced everywhere.

I agree - it also syncs certain files I don't want synced - like log files.

yes! .dropboxignore please!

Maybe make it so certain clients don't take up the entirety of your CPU while they try to add bits onto the icons of the files themselves...

Been using Dropbox since beta. Never had this problem (XP and Vista 32-bit).

It doesn't bother me that it isn't open source per se, but what does bother me (and the reason I don't and wouldn't use it) is that I have no way of independently verifying that their security measures are adequate. I would never trust sensitive data to a third party provider unless at a minimum they had undergone a security audit by an independent third party. As far as I can tell, dropbox hasn't.

I'll agree with you that there are some really, really annoying bugs (Filevault + Spotlight? Flakey lan sync? Resource forks?) that I'd love to get in and fix, but can't, because the source is closed.

I've run into this with other startups too; getting bugs fixed, or even acknowledged, is like pulling teeth. It's way longer and way harder than it has to be.

Along with APIs, we've been promised selective sync, better permissions, and a whole host of other features with due dates in the 9+ months ago range.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dropbox. Couldn't live without it. I even sent them a resume once along with an expanded bug list I wanted to fix, but never heard back.

Just because it's on the todo list doesn't mean they have the manpower to get it done in the next year, especially where new features are concerned. Users pull in all directions...

Sure, I've read Mythical Man-Month too. But you can't give customers a deadline and not deliver 9+ months afterwards.

Holy crap. That's about 5000 new users per day.

While impressive, the number is actuallu quite meaningless until they disclose how many of these become active users.

nearly 1 million, as it says in the article.

Wow, congrats on the huge growth dhouston

I would like to ask, if someone can compare DropBox with Live Mesh. I tried DropBox in the past, but at that time it could not get over our company firewall.

I use now Mesh with satisfaction, and just comparing the features, in Mesh I have 5GB web storage (while can sync also over 5GB limit, in which case it will just not be stored on the cloud), and it also has remote desktop. Now the question is if there is some reason for me to re-evalute Dropbox again.

I'll take a stab at it as I've used both. Or rather I've used both for actual work.

DropBox wins for me because it can access their servers through our firewall (which only allows HTTP/S access to less than 5 ports). Live Mesh could not do this.

I found dropbox a tiny barrier to entry. It was so unobtrusive. Live Mesh pops up stuff on startup, complains that it can't access the internet. Etc. Dropbox just stays silent and waits file locks are released and internet connectivity returns.

Getting at my files online is SO much easier with DropBox, ESPECIALLY now since they have the new UI. It's fast, Mesh isn't.

I've never used the remote desktop feature so I can't comment.

Oh and the feature I use nearly daily is the Public folder where I just save a file in there, right click in Explorer, copy the public URL and give them the URL rather than worry if the email client can support a 10MB file. Brilliant, much faster than slow Messenger file transfers! I don't believe Mesh has this ability.

Anyway, DropBox is a simple enough concept and I feel they refined it so well that anyone can use it. Mesh is just complex and has way too much UI stuff going on.

I'm still well under the 2GB limit but have a 50GB Pro account (for now anyway) - just waiting for the selective sync feature now

I had a chance to briefly chat with Drew, and he's an extremely sharp, knowledgeable, and helpful guy. I suppose he might not have been that good when he started Dropbox, but he's certainly one of the smartest people I've had the privilege of talking to in the Valley. If you believe that A players hire A players, the whole Dropbox team must be top notch. They deserve every bit of the success.

I'm curious if anyone is using this on KDE3?

The site refers to "Linux" as if it had some single monolithic desktop manager, but what they really mean is "running Nautilus", a GNOME file manager. I'm reluctant to just install nautilus for fear of desktop side effects.

I got it working just fine on a Debian machine (Lenny) running Openbox without Nautilus. You can do the installation purely from the command-line and run the daemon in the same way. The one downside is that Nautilus used to be the only way to get visual notitification of syncs, etc. I got syncing just fine, but nothing on a panel or the like.

I haven't used Dropbox in some time though, so someone may have figured out a hack to integrate the tool with KDE's panel in some way. Their forums are pretty active with a variety of Linux distros and desktop environments. Search there.

I'm using it on Slack's KDE4 and it opens Dolphin by default. Once I had it to open the folder with Firefox, dunno how though, probably a bug.

Drew and the crew deserve the success. I'm a very happy user. The file sync is near instantaneous. If I'm working on a document with someone, by the time they tell me they've saved it in the IM window, it's already transferring to my local dropbox.

Great achievement. Some may argue dropbox is a feature rather than a business, something Windows / OS X should do out of the box. And indeed they should, but they don't (not nearly that well anyway). But as soon as the success of DropBox is evident, I think we can expect the next version of OS X to have a "dropbox" that's part of their mobile me strategy, and MS to finally push out this feature aggressively. After all they are both after recurring revenues of this sort. Let's hope they buy DropBox before then.

BTW I've signed up cause I've lost my USB stick =) still prefer USB sticks as upload speeds are slow here.

One thing I'd prefer is dropbox using _my_ S3 buckets so irony rely on them only for syncing. What are the economics of such an approach?

How many of dropbox's paying customers have their own S3 buckets?

For those looking for an alternative to dropbox I can recommend SpiderOak (https://spideroak.com)

- Unlimited number of devices (computers) in one account - Slightly cheaper - Windows, Mac and Linux client - 100% Zero-knowledge security and client side encryption key creation.

My 5 cent

My GF has used both DropBox and SugarSync extensively, and the vote goes to SugarSync - more flexible in what's shared.

great services attract tons of users, who'da thought it.

Not to turn this into a huge circle jerk but for me it's the simplicity. I can recommend it to my friends without worrying that they will ask me to troubleshoot later.

Edit: And I am sure it is the same for other people. The simplicity adds to their ability to spread like "weeds" because people aren't afraid to recommending it.

if there was one service that deserved a good circle jerk it'd be dropbox, though.

It's true. My friend John Ratcliff is a very "old-school" hacker, very set in his ways, but when he discovered Dropbox by accident even he jumped all over it. http://jratcliffscarab.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

For someone working regularly from multiple computers running both Windows and Linux, Dropbox has been a lifesaver. Good on them.

Dropbox is a brilliant service that's so well executed it makes baby jesus cry. That's how much I love it. (paying customer)

Curious: has anyone done anything similar using S3 as a backend?

Yes. Dropbox uses S3 as its backend. (And Jungle Disk is a somewhat similar product that lets you use your own S3 account.)

How about a working CLI client now? the python one is broken.

Anyone can explain me how this business can do money other than having some plan that cost some money. I suppose that most of the account are "free" one. I have hard time to understand how it can be profitable to run.

They charge money for more space. That's exactly how they make money. So what else are you asking?

I have to agree it was a badly worded question. I think the OP has bandwidth concerns. Dropbox could charge based off an upload metric similar to Evernote (which gives 40 MB of transfer free a month).

http://www.evernote.com/about/premium/

While that model more closely aligns to bandwidth costs, I think dropbox is in a different market. For one, Dropbox is competing with external hard drives. It's easier to understand the value proposition when you can compare based on storage.

I sure as hell have no idea how much 40 MB is in terms of use. I do some word docs and some pictures. If I do 5 saves an hour, averaging 10 kb in size and I work for 40 hours a week, is 40 MB enough storage?

Limits based on some ineffable-to-the-layman bandwidth usage numbers totally break the "it just works" factor

Though I must admit, every time I share something with a friend in a public folder I worry that I'll trip up some "amount of shit you can give people" limit and end up banned.

Is it the only way they are doing money? I found suspicious that it can be the only way for DropBox to make money. Do you have any statistic about how much user does pay to have an account?

How's it suspicious? They charge a pretty solid amount of money, in return for a solid amount of space.

Maybe not a native speaker (no offense, I'm not either). Seems like a more reasonable question thinking that way.

Count down to google acquisition?

You know, it would make me buy Google Apps Premier edition, even though I don't need its other benefits.

is the analogy in the title really necessary?

It does add a little - it's clearly not viral growth, that would be millions overnight. Weeds self-seed and grow steadily overtime getting larger as resources allow - it seems to be a fine analogy. Necessary, no; worthy, yes.

I think I've created 2 accounts there before to check it out but never used it again. So, if you're counting "active users" it's only 1,999,998

The app looks great, I just have no use for it. I'm just saying, call it like it is. This is an account-tally, not an "user" count.

"User" counts implies "use" - but this may not be the truth.

Someone didn't read the article:

"Of those, Dropbox has almost one million users that are active."

It was hidden in the first paragraph though.

It'd be nice to know if idle accounts that still connect to the service are included in the count. I am guessing that they are as 50% user retention rate is an atypically (very) high number.

Maybe it's an atypically good product.

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