When we reviewed file-sharing service DivShare way back in October 2007, we were mildly impressed with its one-stop solution for storing, managing and sharing files. A month later, the service was put up for sale on an auction site which prompted us to deadpool it.
Fast-forward to January 2009, when the small startup behind DivShare was finally picked up by a group of internet veterans who started a new company called 3Sixty and aim to not only continue the service but also add some bells and whistles to it in the near future. The reason it took so long for DivShare to be acquired, so I was told, was because the service was doing well and making money and the owners just wanted to make sure it fell into the right hands and not sell it off to quickly and see it fade.
As everyone knows, online file storing and sharing services are a dime a dozen, but DivShare boasts over a million registered users and – gasp – profitability (it helps when you haven’t take a dime in VC funding, of course). I tested the service and while it was not special in any way you look at it, it did work as advertised and you get a decent amount of storage (5 GB) for free. The company is apparently also very serious about not hosting anything but legitimate material on their servers. Annoyingly, a free account means that when you upload a file, it displays on a page filled with blatant in-your-face advertising units and pop-up ads, so that’s definitely a big turn-off. That said, the price for an ad-free service is reasonable and the company is re-evaluating how it displays advertising at the moment.
DivShare also has some nice features like an iPhone application to access your files, a Facebook application for easy sharing on the social network, a WordPress plugin that replaces your regular uploading form with one from DivShare and an extensive API. You can find out more about that here.
Interestingly, the people behind 3Sixty (who used to work for companies like Netscape, Roku, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, PSINet, Sybase, etc.) tell me that the acquisition of DivShare is just one of the steps in the direction they want to take their company, and that they’ve got some really exciting integrated internet communication services in the pipeline. Unfortunately, that’s about all they shared for the moment so we’ll just have to wait and see how that translates in practice.
In any case, DivShare is no longer tagged ‘deadpool’ and you should try it out.