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Dropbox Shop Beta
- rmason 4y agoWhere is the value add as there are already some pretty good solutions available for selling digital products?
- nickfromseattle 4y agoDistribution > innovation? OneDrive probably has a >50m install base without any appreciable value add over Dropbox & Google Drive. Microsoft Teams probably also has >50m user accounts without any appreciable value add over Slack. Dropbox has distribution. Note, I am not defending / speculating on their ability to execute.
- bayindirh 4y agoI think, after iterating their sync technology over and over, they consider it as a "solved" problem. Besides their macOS (kernel modules related) Smart Sync woes, there are not many problems they're facing now. They intentionally keep the Linux client as barebones as possible, but I'd rather not die on that hill today (it's late). So, they're trying to build an ecosystem around their user's files, so they can both capture more files (growth), and create value from this file trove. I understand their position, but they're also hurting their own user base who want basic file syncing by ignoring them (e.g. people who want a better Linux client, KDE compatibility, macOS M1 smart sync woes, etc.). If they solely focus on file sync, there are other competitors coming fast, too (Google is cheap, iCloud is cheap, pCloud is European, etc.), but keeping the integration, performance and features moat is the only sensible strategy for them, at the moment.
- mstipetic 4y agoI don’t think they have a given distribution at the target audience they need for this. The examples you gave were just a simple upsell or a package deal to their existing audience.
- tyrfing 4y agoExisting demand, for one: https://old.reddit.com/r/all/search?q=dropbox&include_over_18=on https://old.reddit.com/r/all/search?q=dropbox&include_over_1... (Possibly NSFW)
- paxys 4y agoA huge chunk of these digital products sold on the internet today link to Dropbox. So the value add is really them removing an extra step in the process for the creator.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Geonode 4y agoLmao at Dropbox. They're forced to claim they're innovating to keep their value up, so they come up with a ton of stuff that nobody wants, completely destroying the reputation of the single simple thing they were initial highly respected for.
- nojito 4y agoSteve Jobs was right >And so he started trolling us a little bit, saying we’re a feature, not a product, and telling us a bunch of things like that we don’t control an operating system so we’re going to be disadvantaged, we’re going to have to figure out distribution deals, which are risky, and sort of a bunch of business-plan critiques. But then he was like, ‘Alright, well I guess we’re gonna have to go kill you, basically.’ Maybe not in those words, but pretty close.
- Uehreka 4y agoHe was right, but he was also years early. It took Apple 5-ish years after that (I’m assuming this conversation was around 2009) to ship iCloud Drive, and then some more years to add things like shared folders (it took them two tries I think). By that point Dropbox was down the Enterprise Hole, but a 10-ish year run isn’t bad for a product, many great products or product categories have had shorter lifetimes.
- NeverFade 4y agoThey can't compete with that "single thing" when every massive tech company offers that same service with enormous advantages in scale.
- rootusrootus 4y agoI've used solutions from other companies, but I kept coming back to Dropbox because ultimately it worked best. The client implementation really matters. Every time they degrade the client experience, I start to ponder moving to something else again. I don't need fancy, I just need it to work every time.
- mikkergp 4y agoWow I haven't visited their website in a while I guess, what happened to the fun playful design? This feels aggressively enterprise.
- OJFord 4y agoWell I'd guess not many consumers pay for Dropbox, and every enterprise sale is a much bigger win.
- scarface74 4y agoDropBox is squeezed on one side by OneDrive bundled with Office seats and on the other side by Box.
- bayindirh 4y agoAlso, for the consumers, Google Drive is much cheaper. If you're on the Mac, 2TB iCloud is also way cheaper, and better integrated.
- scarface74 4y agoCurrently I have: - OneDrive because it comes with O365. - iCloud Drive 2TB - integration with iPhones and the family plan - Amazon Photo Storage - free with Prime. - Google Drive - I still don’t pay it for. But when I run out of the free storage. I will just because of the photo search. I use all of them for photo and video backups mostly.
- bayindirh 4y agoI'm in the same boat with you. However, while I'm keeping the subscriptions because they either came with something, or use them to some extent, I'm consolidating to Dropbox and Google drive. Why? Because I want to use less clients, and don't want to keep track of my files and let them rot. All of the files in my cloud accounts are backed up to local storage, but Dropbox is used to store a lot of files which were on my personal workstation. The reason is, I'll have a life transition and won't have this desktop machine anymore. Hence I need these files anywhere and everywhere. Having a lot of cloud storage is nice, but mentally keeping tack of files is not. As a side effect, I can ruthlessly delete files and remove cruft.
- vorpalhex 4y agoI wonder how quickly they are going to panic clamp down on adult content. This is gonna be used to sell OnlyFans style content ASAP.
- Seattle3503 4y agoAbsolutely. It's too bad CC processors would shut this down. It seems like an ideal use case.
- colpabar 4y agoDropbox is already used to “sell” adult content. Creators accept payments on something like cashapp, and then send the customer a link to a shared dropbox folder. It does make me wonder what they will change now that they support that directly, because if the traditional payment processors are involved, adult content will definitely be a no-no.
- causality0 4y agoIt never fails to strike me as utterly bizarre that financial services are allowed to discriminate like that.
- Seattle3503 4y agoI wish payments weren't an oligopoly.
- colpabar 4y agoWell everyone was cheering them on when they were canceling the nazis so I think any notion that payment processors should be neutral is dead at this point.
- kennywinker 4y agoOh hey look it's a slippery slope argument! First of all, a slippery slope is slippy - that doesn't mean you have to slide down it. You can ban deepy objectionable content, without banning mildly objectionable stuff. As evidence, see any country in the world with functioning hate speech laws. There are lots of them. Second, payment processors / platforms restricting or banning adult content predates the recent resurgence of nazism in america by decades. Third, a bunch of platforms shutting down sex content in recent times has been driven by US laws like FOSTA-SESTA and not "cancel culture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...
- chlee 4y agoIsn’t this idea simply gumroad? Which launched on HN about 10 years back.
- JonathonW 4y agoDropbox Shop is cheaper than Gumroad-- they only pass on the 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee from their payment provider. The way Gumroad's tiered fee schedule works, you only get those rates from them if you've sold $1 million worth of product through them. On the other hand, Dropbox doesn't have anything like Gumroad's Discovery page, so if that's something that you think might drive sales, it might be worth paying Gumroad's higher fees.
- skinnymuch 4y agoIf I recall, Gumroad worked their employees to the bone then let them all go while the founder enjoyed great PR and profitability. I think HN at the time wasn’t against the guy so much (the opposite), but that whole incident pissed me off. I hope Dropbox can take away Gumroad market share.
- yalogin 4y agoThis is completely unrelated to their drive business. Feels coherent given Dropbox is probably used for storing the content so people don’t have to move it all to some other website creation company. I don’t know how much this will stick but worth a shot for Dropbox
- curlftpfs 4y agoFor a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
- warning26 4y agoThank you for reminding me of my favorite HN comment of all time
- CitizenKane 4y agoI was about to say, it's the comment that never dies.
- ace2358 4y agoAfter dealing with Dropbox recently, that actually sounds nicer!
- samschooler 4y agoContext for people (like me) not getting the reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- spoils19 4y agoThe poster seems to be trying to draw a parallel between his comment and an infamous post that he made nearly 15 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224), or maybe just to make him feel bad. I personally don’t think the tones of the two posts are comparable at all. His post has been quoted out of context for the last decade or so, though, so it’s not surprising to me. (Ask yourself, what did “app” mean in his comment?) Several people seem to expect that he would be embarrassed by my comment or regret making it, but it honestly doesn’t bother him at all. I, HN, and even the world have changed a lot in 15 years. Anyway, he's pretty satisfied with where life has taken him. He's certainly not going to sweat someone combing through his post history in a vague attempt to dunk on him. (context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465505)
- dfdz 4y agoI have a few qualms with this app. As a shopify user, you can already build such a system for yourself quite trivially. From the Shopify organization admin, click Stores. Click Create store. In the Store type section, select the purpose of your new store. In the Store details section, enter a name and an URL.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- buzzy_hacker 4y agoSorry to ruin your excellent joke. Context for the down voters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- dfdz 4y agoOn hacker news, it is equal plausible that the comment is being downvoted since it is not completely serious, so I will add the disclaimer that: The purpose of my above comment is to add to the conversation by considering this development on the context of past community response to Dropbox product announcements
- rurp 4y agoThanks for sharing the link. Despite seeing the infamous DropBox comment a number of times I didn't catch the shared language.
- d--b 4y agoAm I the only one to find that dropbox is the only cloud drive that works? Google Drive is _terrible_ with their "shortcuts", you can't have stuff that is shared with you on your local hard drive. It's been terrible for years. OneDrive is mostly made for windows and iCloud for Mac. I don't understand the hate. I use DropBox a lot and quite like it. I built a CMS for it and it automatically synced my markdown files on my mac with a linux box running on Vultr. I just save a file on my computer and bloop, my website is updated. It's been working flawlessly for several years.
- scarface74 4y agoAs Jobs said, DropBox is a feature not a product. For the same price as Dropbox, you can buy the entire Office 365 suite for 5 users with 1TB each.
- aetherspawn 4y agoTo clarify, it is 1 TB for the whole tenant. The first user activates the free 1TB, and the rest may use it.
- scarface74 4y agohttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-al... “Microsoft 365 Family $99.99/year Best value: Save 16% with annual subscription Perfect for up to 6 people Up to 6 TB of cloud storage, that's 1 TB per person Premium safety features in mobile app”
- aetherspawn 4y agoAh, yes, that’s for OneDrive personal, but for most business applications people are probably using SharePoint which works differently (https://lazyadmin.nl/office-365/sharepoint-storage-limits/ https://lazyadmin.nl/office-365/sharepoint-storage-limits/). SharePoint syncs via OneDrive, but offers better categorisation and integration with Windows Explorer and Office (“sites”). I don’t think that the family plans offer tenant management.
- moozeek 4y agoI can literally already hear the desperate cries for help from people who have lost access to their Dropbox accounts because they are accused of selling things that violate vaguely worded terms of service.
- dragontamer 4y agoSelling images / audio / video? Hmmm. Only Fans can think of the ways that this kind of Hub might be used.
- zarmin 4y agoWHAT is going on with dropbox's designs lately? They are almost painful to use. Here's another example: https://i.imgur.com/Y4JLsmU.png https://i.imgur.com/Y4JLsmU.png The down arrow means "download", so the side arrow must mean...."sideload"?
- TheJoeMan 4y agoI find this image being on imgur ironic.
- jtvjan 4y agoLooks like they have lower fees than their main competitor Gumroad[1], but they don't allow adult content[2]. [1]: https://help.gumroad.com/article/66-gumroads-fees https://help.gumroad.com/article/66-gumroads-fees [2]: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/shop-terms-of-service https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/shop-terms-of-s...
- hackandtrip 4y agoPublic company pivoting so many times on low-impact high-competition niches? They surely must have saw that there is a hole to be filled, but I find it a bit hard to see them surpassing Gumroad.
- krm01 4y agoWhat’s not super well known is that when Dropbox went for a major rebranding/redesign, they did it for growth reasons. I remember many people (here on HN and elsewhere on the web) were horrified about their new design. But the reason they did it is because they had hit a growth ceiling with their (mostly) engineer users. So their new positioning was meant to attract a new audience and help the company grow. This Shop experiment tells me their cloud storage growth has plateaud again and they’re looking for ways to tap into new markets. I understood the reasons behind their redesign. Same product, different audience. This Shop thing… not so much.
- SkyPuncher 4y agoStrategically, this feels really odd. Dropbox has been clearly making a move towards the enterprise space recently. Seemingly, for the standard reasons, better margins, bigger deals, easier revenue retention, etc. This is 100% consumer focused. I have a very hard time believing this functionality will be around for the long haul. I simply don't see how this plays into the enterprise strategy.
- TheJoeMan 4y agoI actually filled out a survey from Dropbox seemingly years ago about this feature! I think there are many file types to “sell” other than photos. For example, my Fiance saw someone trying to sell a pre-made wedding planning excel spreadsheet.
- halJordan 4y agoI think it's chasing a very long tail. There seems to be a tremendous amount of people who have digital goods and accept payment via cash app or Venmo or PayPal and then provide a dropbox/google drive link in exchange. Dropbox isn't not doing anything more than monetizing what already happens and it will help legitimize these transactions by linking the payment and the product.
- contravariant 4y agoHow is this consumer focused? It seems to be intended for creators specifically (though perhaps not big corporate ones). Frankly this one of the few features they've added that I can understand the use of. Other than perhaps the way they've made it vaguely easier to 'ignore' a folder (though there's still at least 2 ways to do so, both somewhat inconvenient).
- SkyPuncher 4y agoTechnically, I think this would be B2B2C. I don't anticipate businesses would be the primary purchasers of these digital goods. This seems primarily aimed at individual consumers.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
- z3t4 4y agoI once built a shop like this for a client. Just place an image in a folder. Put the price in the file name. Then they wanted more features... each article needs to have an article number, fine add that to the filename too. Different categories, easy just use folders... I thought it was an elegant solution. Then they wanted more functions, and I added more variables to the file name. They eventually switched to full fledged e-commerce software.
- mazsa 4y agoI think the most simple no-code solution is Stripe payment, e.g. https://bibor.org/portfolio/shop/on-the-back-of-the-universe-print/ https://bibor.org/portfolio/shop/on-the-back-of-the-universe...
- mazsa 4y agoEdit: "Stripe payment links"
- moralestapia 4y agoI was "waiting for the fonts to load" then I saw the comments here and realized that font was a conscious choice. Ugh. As others have pointed out, their design seems to have gone downhill, I haven't visited dropbox in a while but I recall them having a very nice and clean design. Now it looks like someone's MVP that was put together in an afternoon.
- jay_kyburz 4y agoAfter that font privacy discussion earlier in the week I set Firefox to render everything using a system font. Now I want to turn fonts back on just to see the design you are complaining about. Every site looks Brutalist when you render everything in Courier Pro :)
- moozeek 4y agoBTW: the waitlist signup does not seem to work: [an error occurred while processing this directive]
- a2tech 4y agoMaybe they should be focused on large problems--like the fact that deletes don't currently work properly in Dropbox (you can soft delete things at the moment, but things are not being permanently removed--go into your Trash and try to empty it right now and see what happens) rather than adding unnecessary side features.
- jay_kyburz 4y agoTheir file backup saved my bacon a few months back.
- Klonoar 4y agoWhat's the story for tracking sales tax obligations with this?
- spoonjim 4y agoNo idea what this company is trying to be anymore.
- orliesaurus 4y agoMy issue with these kind of tools is that like everything in the digital space, there's nothing stopping someone from purchasing say an ebook from me and then uploading it on some website for anyone to download for free. If I were selling something, I sure as hell would want to lock it down as much as possible, not like sell something behind weaponized share links
- tibbydudeza 4y agoNFT's :).
- puranjay 4y agoOff topic, but I hate, hate the Dropbox design now. It feels like an indie blog, not a place I just want to log onto and get to work. Seems like Dropbox has an identity crisis at this point.