New York based Drop.io launched a dead simple “drop box” for files last November. The service is online storage on the back end, with a very simple/clean user interface and upload features on the front end.
It is similar to box.net and a number of other startups. Users can upload files via a Flash tool or by simply emailing files to a designated address. Files an also be uploaded via a widget (see example here in the right sidebar). The page itself (example) can be open or password protected. The pages can be anonymous, and each one, called a “drop,” has 100 MB of free storage (you can upgrade to 1 GB for $10/year). There are also RSS feeds and email alerts for drops, although they do not contain enclosures. You have to link through to get to the actual file.
All in all, it’s a fairly generic service with a better-than-average but hardly revolutionary interface.
Today, though, they added a very nice niche feature called, simply, Voice. Every drop page has a phone number and extension associated with it. Call the number, dial the extension and record an unlimited length voice message (subject only to the overall 100 MB file size limitation). The file will appear momentarily as a MP3 file on the drop page.
This is an easy way to record a voice note, or even a simple podcast message. For now you can only have one person on the line, so conference calls aren’t a built in feature. Of course, you can always simply three-way dial the drop.io number as well as another person and record a call, or add drop.io to Skype to record a conference call there.
This reminds me of Dave Winer’s TwitterGram project that he created with BlogTalkRadio last year. There are also basic web-based recording functions that turn your voice into a MP3 (see Daft Doggy), although those do not tie into an actual phone number.
I like the service because it’s very, very easy to use and has no real restrictions. It would be perfect if they simply added the file as an enclosure to an email or RSS feed as well, but for now that isn’t an option.
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convenience and laziness floats these companies. been using dropio for quite a while and it’s easier than email or ftp so i tend to use it. wouldn’t pay for it though.
Agreed, the interface seems so simple it’s hard to believe.
The only problem though is that I wonder if the utility is all that compelling to develop a massive following.
I like the simplicity of the interface, very convenient if not lazy.
My problem though is for $10/year, how much goes into security of the actual content?
Also good long-term products have a good monetisation plan. Are they going to offer more premium services in the future.
Tribal Shout has been doing this voice stuff via a phone number for over a year…and they put it into an RSS feed for you.
Thats strange, I don’t see Omnidrive listed as a related company?
http://forum.omnidrive.com/
This is cool. Now … it would be even cooler if they implemented an interface and other companies could develop features using their APIs - a la Facebook or OpenSocial
It sounds cool. But as you said it isn’t anything revolutionary. Nice and simple.
I like jott. very cool tool to convert voice to text, database, mp3, excel sheet etc…. See a brief coverage of jott at http://ceo-articles.blogspot.com
Thanks for the feedback – I am one of the drop.io founders. We are really psyched about the voice function, and are happy to say there are many more great features to come (nod to the API comment, partial attempt to respond to the comment about generating a ‘massive following’ – stay tuned)
Drop.io believes that web-space, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. don’t have to all be driven through account based identity-centric models, but can stand apart from personal identity, and that there are many cases where they are MORE useful and flexible that way for sharing and collaboration. In this we are going for creating a very different sort of ‘platform’ from many of those out there.
With drop.io, each ‘drop’ is a floating chunk of web-space which you can add to via the web, email, and phone… Most or all of the others addressing ‘web storage’ tie it to personal account(s) requiring registration. We toss out that system entirely while maintaining privacy options, allowing people to password protect drops if they choose. By doing this we radically simplify the process of sharing and, we think, make it more flexible and useful.
And as for monetization, Ross, we are indeed building tons of more premium features going forward.
For those of you looking for a little distraction at macworld, check out some videos we are starting to release
http://www.drop.io/users
or drop your musings about macworld tomorrow to:
http://drop.io/macworld
macworld@drop.io
646-495-9204 x 61538
Thanks for the response Sam.
I have a few questions for you.
How do you feel about the competition such as yousendit and box.net?
Is this market now going to be about who can innovate the quickest, seen as there are many competitors in this segment more or less doing the same thing. Is your voice tool a part of this?
How are you going to deal with the limitation of flash component when it goes past 100 megs? Are you focused on this sub 100 meg customer base?
Very long term, do you think there will be a rationalisation of this file-uploader market?
Ross, thanks for the questions. Let me try to respond to each:
*In response to your question about yousendit.com and box.net:
I think they are both great tools for the markets and purposes they serve, and they have both built some cool stuff. There are certainly situations when their specific solutions will work better than ours for specific customers with specific needs. I would like to think, and our users might back me up on this, that there are many times when we work better than our competitors for simply and privately sharing groups of files and media among people and groups.
*Is this market now going to be about who can innovate the quickest…voice tool…?
You always need to innovate quickly, but I think the real answer is that the winner is going to be the company that defines their market correctly, diagnoses their customer’s pain points best, and comes up with the most elegant solution for the market and pain points they define. The implicit statement here is that I actually don’t think that we are in/heading for/ the same market as either yousendit or box (though there is certainly customer overlap)
Voice is very much a part of innovating quickly for us, but it isn’t something we are just doing because it is cool or different – voice is central to our mentality about how people create and share ‘bits’ and where we want to take our product. I would point you to http://www.drop.io/voice where I left a message that gets a bit more into this.
*Flash?
Works great for us now. We are working on other solutions to accompany it, but all with maximal focus on ease and simplicity – it isn’t that we are exclusively focused on the sub 100 mb base, it is actually that we are trying to craft perception of what we are and where we are going, being a wholesale massive storage solution is not it, we don’t want to play that game.
*Very long term?
There will certainly be a ‘rationalization’ of THE ‘file-uploader’ market. Without a doubt. And I don’t think any startup is going to win THAT market. There are structural reasons that the big established players will win there.
Again, I would put back to you though, is that we really don’t see ourselves in the ‘file-uploader’ market. Web-based ‘file upload’ is an important commodity piece of the platform we are building. So are email and voice as individual components. Each is an individual piece of the larger equation around ‘simple private exchange’ towards which we are moving.
The (ugly) fact still stands that highly-questionable-to-outright-illegal uses of copyrighted materials made up the most of the file-uploader/downloader market.. from copyrighted-pdfs ro music to software and you name it…
I have glanced at drop.io previously but never really looked in detail. I have to say I am impressed! I have been looking for a solution to use both personally and in business (though I still have privacy concerns to some extent).
Voice sounds like a cool product too, and pushes this further into the 37signals space of project/event management. I can imagine using this interface for keeping track of a small project, up to delivering the final report to the client.
Any plans for International access numbers though?
This is interesting, in that it focuses on the basics of using the phone as a voice capture device. Many novel apps could be built around it.
However, like I always comment about anything to do with voice, telephony is the ultimate of scale businesses. I’m sure these guys are using a simple Asterisk-based solution so their HW costs are minimal, but they will have variable transport costs that make the economics tough.
It’s exciting times to be in the voice space, and drop.io is the closest I’ve seen to a company that is thinking about voice in the right way. Good luck guys!
Congrats to my fellow NY November Tech Meetup presenters!
Facebook, Google, Vimeo, Tumblr & Microsoft, along with drop.io and our company were the presenters!
Drop.io gave a great presentation!
Cheers
Hi Mike — I just read about this service on Lifehacker, and see that you’ve covered it too. It’s very interesting, and it seems very useful, but… (you knew I was going to say this) it doesn’t do what Twittergram does. They apparently want to drive traffic to their site, so a direct URL to the MP3 doesn’t seem obtainable. There’s no enclosure in the RSS feed, so there’s no way for a podcatcher to find the MP3 to download it locally, and there’s no way we could use this service for Twittergram.
I hope they decide to open it up so that they aren’t just driving traffic to their site, let it be a way of creating MP3s that live *anywhere* on the net.
And hats off to the BlogTalkRadio guys for giving us the freedom to build a cool app like Twittergram with their service. And I think they’re not quite done yet either.
Seeing that we little guys at Daft Doggy got a mention, thought I’d let you know our next upgrade - free of course.
After recording your MP3 from our website we already provide embedded links and direct e-mail of links. The next step is full MP3 enclosures and RSS feeds. We aim to make Daft Doggy the easiest to use Simple Podcasting service on the net. It’s not a replacement for professional podcasting services but it is the easiest way to dip your toes into the world of podcasting.
Cheers
Joe AKA Legless
I’m surprised no one mentioned Dropboks
http://www.dropboks.com/
Their interface is much more intuitive, based on some simple principles.
@hzaidi Not to sound harsh, but I’m surprised no one mentioned dropboks is nowhere even close to the league of drop.io’s functionality. Personally, I find the file explorer metaphor ineffective for collaboration, which is what I believe the market drop.io is catering to - not a web GUI for replacing FTP, like dropboks appears to be.
who funded these idiots? the same idiots who funded all the bookmarking startups in 2006? what a fucking waste.