4 ms·

Seems to be a well-deserved example of doing something unoriginal, boring and well-trodden in a no-bullshit, user- friendly way and being rewarded for it.

by nly 11y ago

Seems to be a well-deserved example of doing something unoriginal, boring and well-trodden in a no-bullshit, user- friendly way and being rewarded for it. I think Whatsapp is another great example - afaict the key innovations there were using cell phone numbers as user IDs and running on every platform known to man. Just works. Dropbox and Imgur are two others.

skrebbel 11y ago
Dropbox was unoriginal, boring and well-trodden?
- UK-AL 11y ago
  There were tons of online storage systems before dropbox, they just had clunkly interfaces.
  - brc 11y ago
    The killer part of Dropbox was multi-platform, and integrating it into the OS properly, so that you knew where your stuff was. Also the downloaded app just used a simple set of credentials to get working. I had tried many solutions before this, and they were all, without exception, a pain to use and usually ridden with ads and weird interfaces. You usually felt dirty going to download a file from the website.
    - _lce0 11y ago
      and that is still the current state. I wanted to replace it with free software, but it's still a PITA --syncthing seems the best so far, although it requires more experience to be a DB killer
- toyg 11y ago
  Microsoft added the "briefcase folder" in Windows 98 (maybe even a '95 update). It was crappy and clunky, but the concept was basically the same. When storage prices started to fall, online lockers and backup solutions were a dime a dozen, they were just painful to use and they would kill your bandwidth. DB was successful because it was easy, nonintrusive, fairly robust and came after bandwidth stopped being a real problem for most people, but particularly original it was not.
- bambax 11y ago
  Don't know why you're being downvoted; Dropbox was very original in that it was 1/ completely platform-agnostic 2/ completely automatic None of the previous attempts at this were even remotely addressing those two (simple) concepts... and they still aren't!!
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    There were others and there is a great Quora thread somewhere discussing why Dropbox was successful.
    - Scoundreller 11y ago
      I believe this is the Quora thread in question: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other...
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        Exactly. Thanks.
- drb311 11y ago
  It was an original, exciting, and ground breaking product in a market that had plenty of unoriginal, boring players. See also MP3 Players and smartphones. Both markets looked boring and well-trodden until Apple blew fresh air into them. The key to this kind of success is finding a segment that is currently niche but won't be for ever. Cloud storage, mobile internet messaging, portable MP3s, portable Internet -- all potential mass markets that were kept niche because the products in the market didn't have mass appeal.
- sanoli 11y ago
  I don't know what's the fuss about Dropbox being called boring. It's a backup service, so it's not really an insult, it's just not supposed to be exciting, or fun. It's supposed to work. It wasn't original either, but it worked seamlessly and reliably to the point where you confidently forgot about it. Would you trade that for some backup that didn't work so well, but was, yeay, more exciting? (I don't even know how you add excitement to backups... do you make it a video game? Add videos?)
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    gamification? Dropbox was gamified, a bit, in my view, in that I had loads of people who'd invite me to dropbox, because they'd get extra storage for getting me to sign up. Maybe it's not real gasification because they didn't get badges?
brc 11y ago
The list of successful companies which put the 'first mover advantage' myth to the sword is very long and illustrious. The saying should be 'first decent mover'. There's a world of difference. Often it's the one that comes along and takes the basic concept and executes it in a way that makes sense to a larger user base is the one that wins. Too often the first versions of a product are still cloaked in the terms and features of the technology that underpins it.
hyperpallium 11y ago
google search - some claim The Algorithm didn't make that much difference, and mostly made for a cool story. Fast, uncluttered, no pay-for-rank It's easy to forget there were lots of search engines before google. It was a boring "done" field
- asr 11y ago
  google search - some claim The Algorithm didn't make that much difference How old are you? The algorithm made a difference :)
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    Yeah, it really did. I remember running searches on Google and AltaVista side by side and the difference was like night and day.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    It certainly did in most cases, but it was hard to separate out the algorithm from the interface. Even if the algorithm wasn't all that good to start with, it was damn fast, and clean, and no ads, so... you didn't mind refining a search a few times, because there were no annoying ads to slow things down.
  - hyperpallium 11y ago
    Old enough to remember pre-google, young whippersnapper! When the idea went round in 2000 that pagerank wasn't the key to google's success, I checked: there was a difference, but not enough to really matter, in the searches I tried. Why would people use google? It was cool and new, had a great story... and made all tradeoffs in favour of letting you get on with searching, without a whole lot of portal BS/spam, fitting OP's criterion. Google's biggest advantage today is speed - esp google suggest is unbelievably fast. It required a huge investment and knowhow that its less profitable competitors just can't match. But the "some" was one of my PhD supervisors, who didn't mind a bit of thought-provoking... unlike today's HN, sad to see.
jotm 11y ago
Unoriginal? When I started using HMA a couple of years ago, there were practically no real competitors! They had the highest number of VPN nodes all over the world, a dozen of IPs per country compared to 1-2 for other services. The app was also easy to use and worked without problems, had no disconnects AND disabled your internet connection IF you did get disconnected for whatever reason, not exposing your real IP. That may have been lip service though, because even their ToS stated "we'll turn your info over to the authorities at the first request, no offense" :-) but technically, it worked well..

by nly 11y ago

skrebbel 11y ago

Dropbox was unoriginal, boring and well-trodden?

UK-AL 11y ago
There were tons of online storage systems before dropbox, they just had clunkly interfaces.
- brc 11y ago
  The killer part of Dropbox was multi-platform, and integrating it into the OS properly, so that you knew where your stuff was. Also the downloaded app just used a simple set of credentials to get working. I had tried many solutions before this, and they were all, without exception, a pain to use and usually ridden with ads and weird interfaces. You usually felt dirty going to download a file from the website.
  - _lce0 11y ago
    and that is still the current state. I wanted to replace it with free software, but it's still a PITA --syncthing seems the best so far, although it requires more experience to be a DB killer
toyg 11y ago
Microsoft added the "briefcase folder" in Windows 98 (maybe even a '95 update). It was crappy and clunky, but the concept was basically the same. When storage prices started to fall, online lockers and backup solutions were a dime a dozen, they were just painful to use and they would kill your bandwidth. DB was successful because it was easy, nonintrusive, fairly robust and came after bandwidth stopped being a real problem for most people, but particularly original it was not.
bambax 11y ago
Don't know why you're being downvoted; Dropbox was very original in that it was 1/ completely platform-agnostic 2/ completely automatic None of the previous attempts at this were even remotely addressing those two (simple) concepts... and they still aren't!!
- ThomPete 11y ago
  There were others and there is a great Quora thread somewhere discussing why Dropbox was successful.
  - Scoundreller 11y ago
    I believe this is the Quora thread in question: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other...
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Exactly. Thanks.
drb311 11y ago
It was an original, exciting, and ground breaking product in a market that had plenty of unoriginal, boring players. See also MP3 Players and smartphones. Both markets looked boring and well-trodden until Apple blew fresh air into them. The key to this kind of success is finding a segment that is currently niche but won't be for ever. Cloud storage, mobile internet messaging, portable MP3s, portable Internet -- all potential mass markets that were kept niche because the products in the market didn't have mass appeal.
sanoli 11y ago
I don't know what's the fuss about Dropbox being called boring. It's a backup service, so it's not really an insult, it's just not supposed to be exciting, or fun. It's supposed to work. It wasn't original either, but it worked seamlessly and reliably to the point where you confidently forgot about it. Would you trade that for some backup that didn't work so well, but was, yeay, more exciting? (I don't even know how you add excitement to backups... do you make it a video game? Add videos?)
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  gamification? Dropbox was gamified, a bit, in my view, in that I had loads of people who'd invite me to dropbox, because they'd get extra storage for getting me to sign up. Maybe it's not real gasification because they didn't get badges?

brc 11y ago

The list of successful companies which put the 'first mover advantage' myth to the sword is very long and illustrious. The saying should be 'first decent mover'. There's a world of difference. Often it's the one that comes along and takes the basic concept and executes it in a way that makes sense to a larger user base is the one that wins. Too often the first versions of a product are still cloaked in the terms and features of the technology that underpins it.

hyperpallium 11y ago

google search - some claim The Algorithm didn't make that much difference, and mostly made for a cool story. Fast, uncluttered, no pay-for-rank It's easy to forget there were lots of search engines before google. It was a boring "done" field

asr 11y ago
google search - some claim The Algorithm didn't make that much difference How old are you? The algorithm made a difference :)
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Yeah, it really did. I remember running searches on Google and AltaVista side by side and the difference was like night and day.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  It certainly did in most cases, but it was hard to separate out the algorithm from the interface. Even if the algorithm wasn't all that good to start with, it was damn fast, and clean, and no ads, so... you didn't mind refining a search a few times, because there were no annoying ads to slow things down.
- hyperpallium 11y ago
  Old enough to remember pre-google, young whippersnapper! When the idea went round in 2000 that pagerank wasn't the key to google's success, I checked: there was a difference, but not enough to really matter, in the searches I tried. Why would people use google? It was cool and new, had a great story... and made all tradeoffs in favour of letting you get on with searching, without a whole lot of portal BS/spam, fitting OP's criterion. Google's biggest advantage today is speed - esp google suggest is unbelievably fast. It required a huge investment and knowhow that its less profitable competitors just can't match. But the "some" was one of my PhD supervisors, who didn't mind a bit of thought-provoking... unlike today's HN, sad to see.

jotm 11y ago

Unoriginal? When I started using HMA a couple of years ago, there were practically no real competitors! They had the highest number of VPN nodes all over the world, a dozen of IPs per country compared to 1-2 for other services. The app was also easy to use and worked without problems, had no disconnects AND disabled your internet connection IF you did get disconnected for whatever reason, not exposing your real IP. That may have been lip service though, because even their ToS stated "we'll turn your info over to the authorities at the first request, no offense" :-) but technically, it worked well..