[HN Gopher] Dropbox Shop Beta
___________________________________________________________________
Dropbox Shop Beta
Author : rmason
Score : 66 points
Date : 2022-06-22 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dropbox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dropbox.com)
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I wonder how quickly they are going to panic clamp down on adult
| content. This is gonna be used to sell OnlyFans style content
| ASAP.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Absolutely. It's too bad CC processors would shut this down. It
| seems like an ideal use case.
| colpabar wrote:
| Dropbox is already used to "sell" adult content. Creators
| accept payments on something like cashapp, and then send the
| customer a link to a shared dropbox folder. It does make me
| wonder what they will change now that they support that
| directly, because if the traditional payment processors are
| involved, adult content will definitely be a no-no.
| causality0 wrote:
| It never fails to strike me as utterly bizarre that financial
| services are allowed to discriminate like that.
| colpabar wrote:
| Well everyone was cheering them on when they were canceling
| the nazis so I think any notion that payment processors
| should be neutral is dead at this point.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Oh hey look it's a slippery slope argument!
|
| First of all, a slippery slope is slippy - that doesn't
| mean you have to slide down it. You can ban deepy
| objectionable content, without banning mildly
| objectionable stuff. As evidence, see any country in the
| world with functioning hate speech laws. There are lots
| of them.
|
| Second, payment processors / platforms restricting or
| banning adult content predates the recent resurgence of
| nazism in america by decades.
|
| Third, a bunch of platforms shutting down sex content in
| recent times has been driven by US laws like FOSTA-SESTA
| and not "cancel culture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St
| op_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I wish payments weren't an oligopoly.
| rurp wrote:
| Hah yeah, this was my first thought as well. It seems like it's
| obviously a primary use case that they won't want to support.
| I'm surprised they don't mention it on the marketing page.
| jtvjan wrote:
| Looks like they have lower fees than their main competitor
| Gumroad[1], but they don't allow adult content[2].
|
| [1]: https://help.gumroad.com/article/66-gumroads-fees [2]:
| https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/shop-terms-of-s...
| z3t4 wrote:
| I once built a shop like this for a client. Just place an image
| in a folder. Put the price in the file name. Then they wanted
| more features... each article needs to have an article number,
| fine add that to the filename too. Different categories, easy
| just use folders... I thought it was an elegant solution. Then
| they wanted more functions, and I added more variables to the
| file name. They eventually switched to full fledged e-commerce
| software.
| yalogin wrote:
| This is completely unrelated to their drive business. Feels
| coherent given Dropbox is probably used for storing the content
| so people don't have to move it all to some other website
| creation company. I don't know how much this will stick but worth
| a shot for Dropbox
| rmason wrote:
| Where is the value add as there are already some pretty good
| solutions available for selling digital products?
| tyrfing wrote:
| Existing demand, for one:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/all/search?q=dropbox&include_over_1...
|
| (Possibly NSFW)
| aeyes wrote:
| Does this require a Reddit account? I get no results.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Fixed, I guess it's URL weirdness on old vs new Reddit.
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| Distribution > innovation?
|
| OneDrive probably has a >50m install base without any
| appreciable value add over Dropbox & Google Drive.
|
| Microsoft Teams probably also has >50m user accounts without
| any appreciable value add over Slack.
|
| Dropbox has distribution. Note, I am not defending /
| speculating on their ability to execute.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I think, after iterating their sync technology over and over,
| they consider it as a "solved" problem. Besides their macOS
| (kernel modules related) Smart Sync woes, there are not many
| problems they're facing now. They intentionally keep the
| Linux client as barebones as possible, but I'd rather not die
| on that hill today (it's late).
|
| So, they're trying to build an ecosystem around their user's
| files, so they can both capture more files (growth), and
| create value from this file trove.
|
| I understand their position, but they're also hurting their
| own user base who want basic file syncing by ignoring them
| (e.g. people who want a better Linux client, KDE
| compatibility, macOS M1 smart sync woes, etc.).
|
| If they solely focus on file sync, there are other
| competitors coming fast, too (Google is cheap, iCloud is
| cheap, pCloud is European, etc.), but keeping the
| integration, performance and features moat is the only
| sensible strategy for them, at the moment.
| mstipetic wrote:
| I don't think they have a given distribution at the target
| audience they need for this. The examples you gave were just
| a simple upsell or a package deal to their existing audience.
| paxys wrote:
| A huge chunk of these digital products sold on the internet
| today link to Dropbox. So the value add is really them removing
| an extra step in the process for the creator.
| datalopers wrote:
| What good solutions for digital? ecwid, squarespace, shopify,
| etsy are all terrible. Digital assets are an afterthought.
| gumroad is okay but trying to build image/video preview or
| audio previews is extremely clunky. there's no way to push
| updates/versions. grouping/package deals are impossible.
| curlftpfs wrote:
| For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself
| quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally
| with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted
| filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be
| accessed through built-in software.
| spoils19 wrote:
| The poster seems to be trying to draw a parallel between his
| comment and an infamous post that he made nearly 15 years ago
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224), or maybe just to
| make him feel bad. I personally don't think the tones of the
| two posts are comparable at all. His post has been quoted out
| of context for the last decade or so, though, so it's not
| surprising to me. (Ask yourself, what did "app" mean in his
| comment?)
|
| Several people seem to expect that he would be embarrassed by
| my comment or regret making it, but it honestly doesn't bother
| him at all. I, HN, and even the world have changed a lot in 15
| years.
|
| Anyway, he's pretty satisfied with where life has taken him.
| He's certainly not going to sweat someone combing through his
| post history in a vague attempt to dunk on him.
|
| (context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465505)
| samschooler wrote:
| Context for people (like me) not getting the reference:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| warning26 wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me of my favorite HN comment of all
| time
| CitizenKane wrote:
| I was about to say, it's the comment that never dies.
| a2tech wrote:
| Maybe they should be focused on large problems--like the fact
| that deletes don't currently work properly in Dropbox (you can
| soft delete things at the moment, but things are not being
| permanently removed--go into your Trash and try to empty it right
| now and see what happens) rather than adding unnecessary side
| features.
| dfdz wrote:
| I have a few qualms with this app.
|
| As a shopify user, you can already build such a system for
| yourself quite trivially. From the Shopify organization admin,
| click Stores. Click Create store. In the Store type section,
| select the purpose of your new store. In the Store details
| section, enter a name and an URL.
| [deleted]
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| Sorry to ruin your excellent joke. Context for the down voters:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| dfdz wrote:
| On hacker news, it is equal plausible that the comment is
| being downvoted since it is not completely serious, so I will
| add the disclaimer that:
|
| The purpose of my above comment is to add to the conversation
| by considering this development on the context of past
| community response to Dropbox product announcements
| rurp wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the link. Despite seeing the infamous
| DropBox comment a number of times I didn't catch the shared
| language.
| mazsa wrote:
| I think the most simple no-code solution is Stripe payment, e.g.
| https://bibor.org/portfolio/shop/on-the-back-of-the-universe...
| d--b wrote:
| Am I the only one to find that dropbox is the only cloud drive
| that works?
|
| Google Drive is _terrible_ with their "shortcuts", you can't have
| stuff that is shared with you on your local hard drive. It's been
| terrible for years.
|
| OneDrive is mostly made for windows and iCloud for Mac.
|
| I don't understand the hate.
|
| I use DropBox a lot and quite like it.
|
| I built a CMS for it and it automatically synced my markdown
| files on my mac with a linux box running on Vultr. I just save a
| file on my computer and bloop, my website is updated. It's been
| working flawlessly for several years.
| kobalsky wrote:
| dropbox has a special place in my heart because it was the only
| one offering linux support for a good time.
|
| I have been using it non stop since it was available, and the
| best thing is that I've completely forgotten about it for
| years. It's happily churning in the background doing its job,
| updating itself automatically and not letting me worry about
| its existence, not a single notification window, and seldomly
| sending me emails about new services.
|
| Google forsake linux, they already went through a client
| deprecation on mac, they bug me about getting permissions for
| the downloads folder they don't need, and it breaks sometimes I
| boot with an external drive connected, it's a chore to use
| their software.
| [deleted]
| XorNot wrote:
| Same thing would work with Syncthing[1], for free and with more
| flexibility.
|
| [1] https://syncthing.net/
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| If I wasnt already paying for the all in one iCloud feature set
| I'd reconsider Dropbox, although this shop thing seems
| interesting to me.
| poglet wrote:
| The reason I stay with Dropbox is because I share my login with
| my partner. The benefit here is that we see exactly the same
| contents in the Dropbox folder, this is something that is
| simply not possible with iCloud (even the family account),
| Google Drive, OneDrive or Amazon.
|
| We have Dropbox on our phone so photos are automatically
| uploaded to it, this is great because we love sharing out
| pictures. If we were to do this with one of the other services
| we would have to mess around with photo permissions and 'share'
| them with the other person constantly. I got iCloud family
| thinking it would behave like a single folder the family could
| access but found out it's really just a bunch of individual
| iCloud accounts with a shared quota.
|
| She can scan a document at home on the Brother scanner that
| automatically places the file onto Dropbox. I can immediately
| fill it out or sign it from my iPad remotely, and she will have
| the modified document waiting for her. This came in very handy
| when moving houses and having a bunch of paperwork to complete.
| I can't even imagine how this process would be on another cloud
| storage provider.
|
| There have been many times where I just want to cancel my
| Dropbox subscription because the pricing and storage tiers
| don't suit me but I can't find a suitable replacement.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Dropbox is something we should celebrate. They mainly solve
| this one problem and do it well. Yes, it's more expensive than
| others, but they are also a profitable company. It's great to
| have these individual companies, instead of having to get
| everything from Google/Apple/Microsoft.
|
| I've been using Dropbox for years with difficult stuff, like
| Node projects with tens of thousands file. The sync works and
| it's really quick.
| AJRF wrote:
| Yep, I've tried them all and Dropbox is the only one that I can
| say works.
|
| - iCloud - simply does not work, trusting your files in here is
| a fools errand.
|
| - Google Drive - They've change the name 6 times since I've
| started this comment, and each name changes requires a new
| download, and each download removes a feature I use. Need third
| party app for Linux.
|
| - OneDrive - Not so bad, but need third party app for Linux.
|
| I've tried many others like SyncThing (just terrible, people
| who tolerate this I give them my pity because it is not good
| software).
|
| I wish Dropbox would just split of products into Dropbox
| Classic (A folder, that syncs!) and then this new fangled
| rubbish they keep building to diversify.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > I've tried many others like SyncThing (just terrible,
| people who tolerate this I give them my pity because it is
| not good software).
|
| Maybe my use cases are too simple, but why did you find
| SyncThing a bad software? In my experience, understanding the
| setup was the difficult part, but that's to be expected when
| you're used to cloud providers managing that on their end.
| Apart from that, it doesn't work on iPhone or iPad, the syncs
| can take a couple of minutes, and that's all the cons I can
| think of.
|
| The big pro for me is being able to sync files that an
| overzealous cloud provider might autosanitize without asking.
|
| Regarding Google Drive on Linux, I've tried InSync and it
| worked so well with a combination of Dropbox+Google
| Drive+Google Workspaces that I bought the lifetime license.
| From time to time they do 50% offs, so it's even more
| attractive. Much better experience than the official Dropbox
| client.
| moozeek wrote:
| Same. I almost exclusively use Dropbox, despite having an
| Office365 subscription with 1TB OneDrive. I tried moving to
| OneDrive when Dropbox raised their prices, but gave up after a
| couple days when OneDrive still couldn't sync my files. Dropbox
| just works, no matter the number or size of files I throw at
| them.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > you can't have stuff that is shared with you on your local
| hard drive
|
| What does this complaint mean? You mean Drive doesn't sync down
| shared files for you to use offline?
|
| On my Chromebook the integration between local files, my Drive
| files, and Drive files shared by others with me is completely
| transparent, including local caching of files I've viewed so I
| can access them again offline, which furthermore includes the
| directory listings of "shared with me" with the cached and not
| cached files distinguished by bold or grey names. I can also
| explicitly mark Drive files as available offline, if I want to
| manage it manually.
| bathory wrote:
| The iOS client for OneDrive integrates quite well with macOS. A
| lot better than iCloud for Windows actually.
| Geonode wrote:
| I use sync.com. I like it.
| frozenport wrote:
| Ultimately, the alternatives are tolerable.
| scarface74 wrote:
| As Jobs said, DropBox is a feature not a product. For the same
| price as Dropbox, you can buy the entire Office 365 suite for 5
| users with 1TB each.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Dropbox sometimes get's stuck for us (very annoying). We pay
| for google so have free google drive. We pay for office so have
| one drive.
|
| We use dropbox as a poor persons collaboration tool. About
| 100,000 files in 20,000 folders. My major complaint - when it
| gets stuck syncing a quit on the app and restart of the app
| solves things - so I wish they would do that internally to the
| app, just timeout and restart whatever is jamming things up.
|
| I do like the app / folders scoped permissions. For apps that
| play well there is an apps folder, and the app just has access
| to its own folder in there. A nice integration point for apps
| to dump files to for users to look at.
| dylan-m wrote:
| Dropbox is also terrible toward people who don't want to use
| their service, in a way that paying users are _conveniently_
| unaware of. Someone shares a folder with your free account?
| That counts against your quota. Once it exceeds your quota,
| Dropbox will yell at you for exceeding your storage limit, when
| all you ever wanted to do was view files people have shared.
| Want to keep a folder available offline on your iPad? Better
| pay up.
|
| I appreciate them for being an independent company that is
| doing its own thing in a gradual way. The internet needs more
| of those. But it would be miserable if they became a major
| player with their existing contempt towards end users.
| Steven_Vellon wrote:
| This exists because otherwise someone could just create a
| bunch of alts and share folders with a main account to get
| infinite storage. If someone just wants to share content,
| they can share it as a downloadable folder. As in, users can
| download files or a Zip of the whole folder to their device.
| That does not count against quota.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| This hit me years ago. I had 5 or 6 clients who were all
| raving about how great and free dropbox was. Each shared
| files with me, but it put me over my own limit. Each of them
| were only sharing a few hundred meg, but it put me well over
| the 1 (or 2?) gig limit, and I had to pay to continue using
| it to get their files (which was free for them). Left a bad
| taste in my mouth.
| Geonode wrote:
| Lmao at Dropbox. They're forced to claim they're innovating to
| keep their value up, so they come up with a ton of stuff that
| nobody wants, completely destroying the reputation of the single
| simple thing they were initial highly respected for.
| _jal wrote:
| I have friends, mostly musicians, who use them, and it drives
| me nuts. I'm almost at the point of building a VM strictly for
| it, I'm certainly not going to install that garbage on my
| daily-use machines.
|
| I would literally pay them a buck as an annoyance tax each time
| I have to suck a file out of there, if they would make it
| painless to do via a browser.
| nojito wrote:
| Steve Jobs was right
|
| >And so he started trolling us a little bit, saying we're a
| feature, not a product, and telling us a bunch of things like
| that we don't control an operating system so we're going to be
| disadvantaged, we're going to have to figure out distribution
| deals, which are risky, and sort of a bunch of business-plan
| critiques. But then he was like, 'Alright, well I guess we're
| gonna have to go kill you, basically.' Maybe not in those
| words, but pretty close.
| Uehreka wrote:
| He was right, but he was also years early. It took Apple
| 5-ish years after that (I'm assuming this conversation was
| around 2009) to ship iCloud Drive, and then some more years
| to add things like shared folders (it took them two tries I
| think). By that point Dropbox was down the Enterprise Hole,
| but a 10-ish year run isn't bad for a product, many great
| products or product categories have had shorter lifetimes.
| NeverFade wrote:
| They can't compete with that "single thing" when every massive
| tech company offers that same service with enormous advantages
| in scale.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've used solutions from other companies, but I kept coming
| back to Dropbox because ultimately it worked best. The client
| implementation really matters. Every time they degrade the
| client experience, I start to ponder moving to something else
| again. I don't need fancy, I just need it to work every time.
| scarface74 wrote:
| _You_ might. But as an individual consumer, you don't
| matter. The money comes from the "enterprise".
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Dropbox _does_ work the best, but some years back they took
| out their "middle tier" so you couldn't just pay a few
| bucks a month, then a year or two after that sharply
| limited the free tier, took away the public folder, etc. At
| some point I had to ask myself "is this so much better than
| iCloud for my personal syncing and an FTP share directory
| for a public folder replacement," and realized the answer
| for me was "no."
| bayindirh wrote:
| Actually I understand where they're coming from, but this
| ecosystem doesn't work with Linux well, and this hurts the
| utility of the Dropbox a lot, if you have one or more Linux
| systems under your account.
|
| They don't want to dedicate the necessary resources to keep
| their sync clients in top shape in recent times. That's kinda
| troubling.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I was "waiting for the fonts to load" then I saw the comments
| here and realized that font was a conscious choice. Ugh.
|
| As others have pointed out, their design seems to have gone
| downhill, I haven't visited dropbox in a while but I recall them
| having a very nice and clean design. Now it looks like someone's
| MVP that was put together in an afternoon.
| moozeek wrote:
| I can literally already hear the desperate cries for help from
| people who have lost access to their Dropbox accounts because
| they are accused of selling things that violate vaguely worded
| terms of service.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Selling images / audio / video?
|
| Hmmm. Only Fans can think of the ways that this kind of Hub
| might be used.
| chlee wrote:
| Isn't this idea simply gumroad? Which launched on HN about 10
| years back.
| JonathonW wrote:
| Dropbox Shop is cheaper than Gumroad-- they only pass on the
| 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee from their payment provider.
| The way Gumroad's tiered fee schedule works, you only get those
| rates from them if you've sold $1 million worth of product
| through them.
|
| On the other hand, Dropbox doesn't have anything like Gumroad's
| Discovery page, so if that's something that you think might
| drive sales, it might be worth paying Gumroad's higher fees.
| zarmin wrote:
| WHAT is going on with dropbox's designs lately? They are almost
| painful to use.
|
| Here's another example: https://i.imgur.com/Y4JLsmU.png
|
| The down arrow means "download", so the side arrow must
| mean...."sideload"?
| moozeek wrote:
| BTW: the waitlist signup does not seem to work: [an error
| occurred while processing this directive]
| mikkergp wrote:
| Wow I haven't visited their website in a while I guess, what
| happened to the fun playful design? This feels aggressively
| enterprise.
| OJFord wrote:
| Well I'd guess not many consumers pay for Dropbox, and every
| enterprise sale is a much bigger win.
| marcinzm wrote:
| They charge as much for business per user as Google does for
| its highest tier workspace product. They charge more than
| Microsoft charges for Office 365 (granted that only has 1TB
| per user rather than 5TB but I doubt many people hit close to
| that).
| scarface74 wrote:
| DropBox is squeezed on one side by OneDrive bundled with
| Office seats and on the other side by Box.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Also, for the consumers, Google Drive is much cheaper. If
| you're on the Mac, 2TB iCloud is also way cheaper, and
| better integrated.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Currently I have:
|
| - OneDrive because it comes with O365.
|
| - iCloud Drive 2TB - integration with iPhones and the
| family plan
|
| - Amazon Photo Storage - free with Prime.
|
| - Google Drive - I still don't pay it for. But when I run
| out of the free storage. I will just because of the photo
| search.
|
| I use all of them for photo and video backups mostly.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I'm in the same boat with you. However, while I'm keeping
| the subscriptions because they either came with
| something, or use them to some extent, I'm consolidating
| to Dropbox and Google drive. Why?
|
| Because I want to use less clients, and don't want to
| keep track of my files and let them rot. All of the files
| in my cloud accounts are backed up to local storage, but
| Dropbox is used to store a lot of files which were on my
| personal workstation. The reason is, I'll have a life
| transition and won't have this desktop machine anymore.
| Hence I need these files anywhere and everywhere.
|
| Having a lot of cloud storage is nice, but mentally
| keeping tack of files is not.
|
| As a side effect, I can ruthlessly delete files and
| remove cruft.
| omnimus wrote:
| I know many freelancers in creative industries and they would
| never pay for google workplacw or office. They dont even know
| how much gdrive or onedrive cost. Yet they all have the 2TB
| dropbox tier because thats what you get. Thats what everybody
| gets. And since its the backup of their professional lives
| they will probably use dropbox forever.
| hashmymustache wrote:
| I just don't understand why they don't have a lower cost tier
| less than 2Tb.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| I worked at Dropbox briefly, and I asked this too. The answer
| was basically that they tried it (multiple times IIRC) and
| every time it ended up being a net negative on their ARR
| since it siphoned enough of the user base away from their
| other options. I think, also, the sort of user that uses less
| than 2TB isn't their "core" customer profile (think
| photographers, videographers, artists, and musicians).
|
| I was bummed, but for a publicly traded company its a little
| hard to argue with the logic.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Because it creates lock-in. I have a 3.7GB folder shared with
| me, and I can either use the free tier or 2TB tier. Nothing
| in between.
| paxys wrote:
| I don't get it either. iCloud does 50GB for $1 and 200GB for
| $3. OneDrive does 100GB for $2 and 1TB for $7 (which includes
| Office). Google does 100GB for $2 and 200GB for $3.
|
| The cheapest Dropbox subscription is meanwhile $12 and
| overkill for most casual users. Maybe it isn't worth it for
| them to charge lower amounts on a credit card?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Dropbox lost interest in non-enterprise customers quite some
| time ago. It kind of makes sense too, since "normal users" are
| going to use the cloud functionality built into their OS,
| whether that's OneDrive, Google Drive, or iCloud Drive.
| hackandtrip wrote:
| Public company pivoting so many times on low-impact high-
| competition niches?
|
| They surely must have saw that there is a hole to be filled, but
| I find it a bit hard to see them surpassing Gumroad.
| krm01 wrote:
| What's not super well known is that when Dropbox went for a major
| rebranding/redesign, they did it for growth reasons. I remember
| many people (here on HN and elsewhere on the web) were horrified
| about their new design.
|
| But the reason they did it is because they had hit a growth
| ceiling with their (mostly) engineer users.
|
| So their new positioning was meant to attract a new audience and
| help the company grow.
|
| This Shop experiment tells me their cloud storage growth has
| plateaud again and they're looking for ways to tap into new
| markets.
|
| I understood the reasons behind their redesign. Same product,
| different audience.
|
| This Shop thing... not so much.
| nijave wrote:
| Maybe SMBs?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Strategically, this feels really odd.
|
| Dropbox has been clearly making a move towards the enterprise
| space recently. Seemingly, for the standard reasons, better
| margins, bigger deals, easier revenue retention, etc.
|
| This is 100% consumer focused. I have a very hard time believing
| this functionality will be around for the long haul. I simply
| don't see how this plays into the enterprise strategy.
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