We built Receivd to not just share files with our friends and family, but to have them share back photos and other stuff with us. Our parents and our friends', for example, cannot understand Dropbox's shared folders, but they're using Receivd to share photos they took with their kids. That's a big win for us.

We love Dropbox and use it everyday, but we feel that Receivd does sharing the way that most consumers understand. For example, people move stuff out of shared folders all the time, which deletes it for everybody else - just a consequence of the tech. We do know that Dropbox is killing it, and as loyal customers we're very happy for them and wish them well.

I don't understand how people that don't understand Dropbox shared folders would understand Receivd, a more complex app?

However, some people I share folders with do use it as a transfer mechanism and remove the files from it.

Because it has a more explicit interface (vs. Dropbox's "implicit" interface.)

That is, for what I can see with Receivd the user explicitly "opens" an app (as they're used to doing for almost anything else on their computer), which in turn clearly states "drag and drop files here to share."

With Dropbox the user needs to understand the concept of a shared folder that "magically" syncs with other computers. For many users this is an alien concept and may confuse them. I know of many people who have a Dropbox account, yet use the service exclusively through the web interface, simply because typing a URL, logging in, browsing for a file, clicking and downloading it is a concept they "get."

There's no such thing as "one size fits all" in this world---specially when it comes to user interface design.

Edit: I should clarify I do not work for Receivd, nor have any connection with the team, so I don't speak for them. This is just my assessment as a UI designer.

Minusfive's point of view tracks with years of working with non-technical customers, many of whom have a mental model suggesting that files "live in" the application as opposed to being in a folder somewhere.

I don't know how far dragging and dropping files is going to get them (many of my users could not locate a file if it bit them on the nose), but hey, it might work.