I would argue that compete.com stats for something like dropbox are pretty inaccurate. However, that being said, the website traffic is probably much less than the actual growth. I've been to the dropbox site only a handful of times, but I use it every day with the file system integration.
I'd love to see a graph of their bandwidth and storage growth. I'll bet that would be a site to behold.
Same here. I set up a dropbox for every team I work with. I think the idea of using a dropbox rather than focusing on syncing computer folders like what sugarsync does will reduce the fear of some people in uploading their folder contents. Dropbox being a folder by itself give people that sense of security and also it's a lot easier to explain!
Agreed - I use it nearly daily. I can honestly say it is one of the few apps that has proven so invaluable to me that I have been inspired to tell countless friends, associates and customers about it...
As much as I like DropBox, you have to take dl.getdropbox.com out of the equation to get an accurate comparison, because dl is used for sharing files with third parties and even hosting files on the web.
In general, it's hard to look at web traffic statistics alone for a product like Dropbox because in some use cases, it can be doing its job perfectly without you ever needing to go to the website. A surprising percentage of our active users basically never go to the site!
Dropbox is one of my most important tool.
It allows me to switch between my linux and window computers without having to manually having to transfer data.
It is simple to use and understand.
Does Dropbox ever check their bizdev email address? We've emailed them trying to partner, and our users would all be paying users. Guess they don't like revenue.
If they want to reply with the fact that they don't want to partner with us, that's fine. We simply wanted to add the feature to our enterprise application and were ready to pay licensing for 2000 users (and growing daily). The problem is, they didn't even respond with that - so my assumption is the bizdev email is being forwarded to /dev/null at the moment.
Yes, it's great for that purpose, except when two ore more people edit too vigorously at the same time. E.g. a file is updated by your friend, while you're working the same file open in an editor. When you save, you overwrite his changes.
If you have a solution to this problem, let us know... :)
What I love about Dropbox is that you don't have to check in/check out every time you make the slightest change. The versioning is implicit, which is the way it should be for most personal files (although it would be a disaster for SCM).
I've been using Dropbox to sync shell configuration files across several (4+) machines and it's a dream come true. I now have versioned bashrc files, my vim plugins, on every machine.
SVN is for version control of files. Dropbox is simply for sharing/syncing files where you don't need a full history.
I use it on my laptop/home/work computers. If I have a file I need on another computer rather than vpn into work and send it over or ftp into a server and drop it there to pick it up later I just throw it in the dropbox and it syncs to all computers. It's nice.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that dropbox does keep a version history of your files. I just don't use that particular feature.
You could get basically the same service, but uglier and slower, via webdav_svn and Trac. I did that for a while back in ~2005, but man was it slow. Maybe today, you could use Git with a cronjob that autocommits, pulls and pushes every minute or on mtime changes.
I will pay for the service, but only after I've exhausted my X free gigabytes. I'm extending that as far as I can by referring people, and thus getting 250MB more free space for each referral.
If you haven't signed up yet, use my referral link, and you'll get 250MB extra free too :-)
Someone voted me down, but it's a serious question.
An inherent part of the "freemium" model is the "free" bit. The point is to entice people in further. It's up to you the service offerer to make the pay service so compelling that people want to switch to it. It's completely wrongheaded to look at the people who aren't willing to pay and say they are the problem, or say or imply that they are leaching or ungrateful.
You are enticing people in, if you don't have what it takes to then transform them into paying customers, and you don't want to pay for their ongoing use, then perhaps you should switch to a free-trial instead of a free service.
I'd pay for it if they had a plan in between 2GB and 50GB. I want more like 10GB for like $2/month or something - the big plan is too big, so I'd rather not give them $8 extra per month out of the goodness of my heart.
I'd love to see a graph of their bandwidth and storage growth. I'll bet that would be a site to behold.
It's a great idea, and congrats to all involved!