1 post tagged “funding”
Man, as if this little wonder app known as drop.io isn't simply good enough as a 1 for 1 replacement of long time classic "I have to send you a 50mb proposal but your email no likey big file" fixer, YouSendIt, drop.io has upped the ante with yet another federated communication point.
(Yes friends, I'm still bitter about not getting funding backin 2006 to start Feddle and accordingly, being bought by Google. Damn you GrandCentral... mwaaahh!)
Check this new feature on the drop.io radar:
A bit on calling a drop:
Each drop has a phone number and custom extension (just like each has an email address). Dial the number, wait for the prompt, enter your extension and start talking. Whatever you say we will convert to an MP3 and put on your drop in a matter of a few seconds…for you to listen to, download, share, use however you want.
Now naturally, being a proponent for federated communication principals, this gets my collaborative, Voice XML juices flowing pouring, but we should practice some constraint here. I think the main draw, and marketing message that I hear from drop.io, is that it is an efficient, and streamlined method for sharing large files online. Period. I love it because drop.io adheres to the KISS principles that have shaped the nature of our best friends when it comes to administration: terse yet straightforward command line operations in UNIX. Do one thing, and do it uncompromisingly well.
As long as the feature enhancements are provided in an unobtrusive and non-obfuscating fashion, which I entirely believe drop.io has and will continue to do, I believe drop.io will be one of the better acquisition targets for 2008 for any Office 2.0 vendor.
Without even reading the drop.io blog, I'm certain that the next step is to widgetize drop.io to enable ad-hoc, file-centric collaboration to other applications. The applications are various, we'll all agree. Monetization could follow from the typical banner placements, enhanced by personalising the ads based on the text of notes, the voice recognition of saved telephone calls, and contents of documents uploaded. It will be interesting to see if drop.io can create a new business model around monetizing collaboration in the cloud, something perhaps around the number of participants in a drop, and their activity therein. Ultimately, this product will serve a few main markets:
- day to day users looking to share the occasional ripped CD
- the highly technical looking to enrich their applications
- corporate entities who have adopted cloud computing and look to plug in drop.io as their service provider
I'd like to see how drop.io weaves in monetization to each of these segments.
Finally, my next concerns for longevity is that with recent trends in development establishing the fact that its fairly trivial to rip-off an application, so the copy-cat game could be a threat to drop.io. Differentiators like voice to MP3 is a good first step to building barriers to competition, but drop.io has yet to develop some form of IP, whether it manifests itself in storage hardware or patented algorithm, that can seal off potential combatants from the arena.
