Israeli startup eSnips relaunched today with a new look and substantial feature upgrades. I did not have a chance to meet with eSnips during my recent trip to Israel, but CEO Yael Elish and VP Marketing Efrat Moshkoviz visited silicon valley a couple of weeks ago and i was able to get a demo.
It’s hard to categorize eSnips. We looked at it as part of our review of online storage providers – and although eSnips does provide 1 GB of free storage for users, they clearly are up to something else as well.
The core idea is to allow users to upload media files of any type – photos, videos, office documents, whatever – tag them, and either keep them private, share with other or make them public. But eSnips is also allowing bookmarking of web content, from a whole page to a line or paragraph. Others can comment on each piece of media or content as well, and rate a user created page. RSS feeds are available for everything.
Given the social aspects of the service, eSnips is really a content-centric social network.
eSnips also offers a client uploader for file transfers, and a toolbar for easier bookmarking. Both only work on Windows machines at this time, however.
I like combining media and other files with bookmarked content, and although I’m not sure if eSnips in its current form will stand out enough from the crowd, I do think they are on to something interesting. If virality kicks in from sharing, they could have a winner. eSnips is free, and they will charge for storage above 1 GB and other services.
Great stuff from eSnips!
First of all the new format is cool!
I prefer the Orange-white interface to the blue one.
I really recommend the Uploader for files transfers, i will just add that you can upload up to 10M file and that you can upload some files all together which is very good!
http://img57.im...2/esnips0zs.jpg
and the Uploader works so much faster than uploading directly from the site.
Well done!
Orli – good to hear you like the new esnips, and yes, I totally agree that using hte uploader and toolbar create a different experience. Since it’s about uploading files why not do it quicker. It’s funny that lots of people’s first comment was about how much they like the new UI and colors. There was a huge debate about it here…clear winners in the orange camp!
Great idea. A web content repository not just for softcopy content, but also for relative content (urls). Big question: How do you get people to pay for extra storage when there are a lot of products out there that offer similar functionality. And when the going gets tough, a price war may ensue, which could kill most of them.
Looks like you can have folders but no subfolders?
Hi Saul,
Our business model is dvertising. If esnips goes where we want it to go, and the model works for 1GB, than additional storage should be free too. I think that charging for stoage is not a good idea if you want to encourage sharing and publishing of content. If the model works, than we’ll be the first ones to offer larger storage for free.
Companies who charge for additional storage position themselves as sotrage companies. It may be a good business but that’s not where we want to go.
Bandwidth may be more of an issue, and we’ll have to see as we go.
So thanks for asking the question and giving me the opportunity to clarify this point.
To Mike Burns’ comment – Yes, it’s only folders, since folders are actually web sites, subfolders don’t make too much sense. Also, we didn’t want to complicate usage with issues of permissions in subfolders.
Todah Yael. That makes sense. I’m always worried when I see companies with a limited revenue strategy. Good to see you guys thinking down that line. Good luck folks.
Yael – When can we expect Mac versions of the uploader and toolbar?
Mike: We didn’t have it scheduled, but based on the number of request we’ve received recently, we need to consider and hopefully do it. I’ll update on it as soon as we decide. Suggestions on what’s the most effective way to port it to mac are welcome.
Looks like you need to work on the security a bit – even after I keep clicking the signout button, I can still use the back button and go edit my account again!!! Only clearing the browser cookies really logs you off.
Hi Yael,
Congrats- this relaunch must be exciting for everyone!
Drop me an email, and I’ll be happy to send you some Mac platform pointers.
Mike – thanks, will check it out with the team.
Yeal,
you need to out information for Mac users on your site — it is abysmal! There are no error messages, no AJAX popups or anything. To a Mac user , ti looks as if the service MIGHT work, it lets you sign up and everything and even attempts to upload files, and then it simply DOES NOT WORK. That is just terrible.
First of all, you should obviously support Mac, but for the time that you don’t, you have to tell Mac users that you don’t, and prevent them from signing up, prevent them from starting to upload files, etc. Because this is a sure-fire way to frustrate lots of your users who will not come back later.
As for me – I’m totally satisfied with Scrapbook FF plugin (http://amb.vis....illa/scrapbook/).
I don’t know whether it’s good to share my surfing artefacts…
Mytuneslive.com is a LOT better….a LOT better…
Can anyone tell me if an esnips for mac has come out yet because i need it very urgent
thanks
eSnips is well cool, with their 2GB (now) of storage. Only one problem – when you upload a lot of pdfs like I do you can’t link directly to the pdf file itself – you get redirected via the folder it is in. A slight inconvenience, but apart from that a good service.
Sam
http://soapboxj...ry.blogspot.com
You can do that..
copy a link address by right clic on the link, it works, it open the file directly
standa
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eSnips is well cool, with their 2GB (now) of storage. Only one problem – when you upload a lot of pdfs like I do you can’t link directly to the pdf file itself – you get redirected via the folder it is in. A slight inconvenience, but apart from that a good service.
Sam
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