We recently released a set of new features including real-time media sharing, with fully integrated web chat, support for third party clients, and mobile real-time chat support (watch our screencast to see these features in action). We are really proud of this release, and think that it pushes the ball forward on enabling true lightweight real-time collaboration.

Before the release, we discussed several hypothesizes on how it would effect how people interact with the service.  One thing we all strongly believed is that this release would drastically increase 'average time on site', since there is now real value to consistently being on a drop rather then visiting it on a one-off basis.  As an example, we as a team now use a drop for all private communications and media-sharing every day in the office.  Rather than just visiting drop.io quickly to get a file we need and leaving, we are each literally spending 10 hours a day on our team drop.

A few days after the launch we went to Google Analytics to see what they were reporting as the change in 'average time on site'.  What we saw was perplexing, rather than seeing an increase in average time on site, Google was reporting a decrease...



First, we thought that it was just a matter of a lot of new users quickly checking out drop.io as a result of blog posts and press, and then moving on - but we dug around, and without an increase in 'bounce rate' or other indicators, that clearly was not the case.

So, we had to dig a little deeper to explain the phenomenon...

Moving to real-time fundamentally changed the user interaction with our site. Instead of having to refresh the page to see updates to a drop, all changes are now automatically shown in real-time. If another user on a drop uploads a photo, you will see that image fade in the moment the upload is complete. This principal applies to everything on drop.io (deleting files, commenting, reordering, changing background, rotating images, etc). The effect of this is a decrease in the average page depth per visit since users no longer have to refresh their page, simply load the drop and all updates will be pushed to you. So, what does this mean?

Turns out that Analytics doesn't constantly poll users to see if they are connected (which would be inefficient and costly) but instead relies on calculating the elapsed time between pageviews. If a user visits a drop in the media view for 3 minutes, then moves on to the blog view, Analytics will detect the elapsed time between views and add that to the users current time on site. However If that user then stays on the blog view for 15 minutes and continues on to cnn.com the 15 minutes will not be recorded as part of the time on site for that user since Analytics won't be able to detect the users exit. In drop.io's particular case, our real-time features encourage users to stay on one page for an extended period of time without refreshing, which ultimately results in a time on site being recorded at 0 seconds for that user (since no change in pages ever takes place, Analytics has no elapsed time to calculate). 

Oddly enough the decrease in average time on site likely signals in increase in average time on site, as more users stay on a single page and get counted as 0 seconds on site. If you are watching your average time on site as a key metric for measuring a features usage...make sure you understand the implications of Analytics' calculation method first.*

So, basically, the Google Analytics (which is an incredible tool) can't actually give us a meaningful 'average time on site' anymore.  This takes us all the way back to the early 1990s when companies had real issues measuring use on their own sites, and had to spend a lot of time and energy building home-spun solutions for what seem now like very basic problems.

As the web moves into a new real-time phase of development, we need new tools to support changing user behavior and changing rules.  On one hand, this is going to cause headaches for early movers (minor but real ones), but on the other hand it means there are new opportunities for companies to innovate ways to recreate basic tools for a new web....  But either way you slice it, it is undeniable that there is a new vocabulary evolving on the web, and a lot of old tools will either need to update, or get out of the way.

This week we are excited to launch a partnership with the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) whose ranks include some of the absolute best professionals in news photography, video, and multimedia.

While millions of people use drop.io thousands of different ways, we have watched drop.io gained significant and particular traction with creative professionals, largely because of our particular focus on enabling collaboration and sharing of rich media.
Steve

want to just see it? = screencast

Since we founded drop.io our mantra has been 'simple private sharing'.  We focus all our energy on making it as dead simple as possible for you to exchange any media, information, and data with exactly whom you want how you want for as long as you want...

on Tuesday we are fundamentally changing the game by taking our entire platform real-time for all rich-media, with fully integrating web chat, support for third party clients, and mobile real-time chat support (iphone, gphone, etc). 

So, drops are now alive.

Simply create a drop in one click, inviting collaborators to a custom url, and drop.io gives you a rich media private real-time stream for private sharing and exchange.  If anyone adds a file, writes a note, adds a link, sends in an email to drop, calls in a voicemail to the private line, etc.  that file appears on the drop for everyone, and can be instantly viewed, played on the site, and downloaded.  No page refreshes, just real-time file sharing and collaboration through all drops.

Meaning...

1.  fully live asset and change streaming (with zero page refreshes)
2.  /chat dedicated view with all files, notes, messages in-line
3.  'chat' layer on every view
4.  /chat mobile view (iPhone, Gphone, others)
5.  third party chat support
6.  supports all other drop.io 'inputs', including API apps
...(learn more)

Why?

Storing files online isn't the point, it never has been - we strive to create the best sharing and collaboration tool for any group, team, or organization and in our minds this means go fully real-time or go home, and we are very proud to be breaking new trail in this respect. 

For drop.io 'realtime' isn't about fostering, filter, and display open conversation - that is the job of others.  Rather, what we continue to strive to enable pre-existing, largely real world, structured groups with realtime media sharing. 

This means we look to enable in as simple a way as possible any group of co-workers collaborating on a project, a school classroom, or a conference session.   If you are using drop.io as a tool with a group of collaborators pulled together from another online or network service, that is fine.  You take care of figuring out the team with which you want to collaborate or share, we will provide the tools for sharing the media and hosting the collaboration.  There are great other services that specialize in identity, network, and distribution...  use those to define your group - we are hear to provide a feed to enable the group you choose. 

Major Use Cases?

Team Collaboration:  the drop.io team has been using a team drop on a daily basis for weeks now as our primary means of collaboration.  Every morning the team members navigate to the drop, or  open a chat client pointing to the drop.  Sometimes when people are in meetings or on the road they log in with their phones.  This allows the team not only to stay in sync with normal chat messages back and forth while working on projects, but it makes collaborating on documents and media assets a breeze.  Being able to pass around a design sketch, or snap an idea with a camera phone and instantly have it in front of the whole group has been really effective.  Best of all, the historical feed of all media, links, notes, etc sent back and forth remain in the drop for easy reference and project tracking.

Conferences and meetings:  we have also been experimenting with how realtime works for live events.  We have been testing setting up a drop for a live event, and then asking participants to log on to the drop by simply navigating to the drop name.  People can then posts questions, comments, relevant links, and rich media specifically relating to the event at hand in real time.  This works as well for a large group meeting with the feed of drop information projected on a wall as it does for a conference call where a project is being reviewed by several parties.

Enabling other existing groups:  we know that many real world communities, societies, and organizations have been enjoying drop.io as an easy way to share media with their constituents. We hope this real-time release will help them further collaborate and share with each other either tied to specific events, or on a day to day basis.

More:  the key is that with this system you can directly point groups of people to a private web address.  No signup, no registration, no software, no hassle.  This ease of access to live rich media feeds is extensible in all sorts of ways and we have been excited to hear some early ideas from the drop.io user community on how they will adopt it for the classroom, and other relevant settings.

for the technically interested, how are we doing it... 

Using the Jabber (XMPP) protocol and through a chain of events mediated by JavaScript, BOSH and XMPP drops are now updated for all users viewing that drop in real-time. We are using ejabberd, which is known for its high level of compliance with XMPP. On the front end we use the Strophe javascript library, which uses  a technique called Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP (BOSH) to connect to a Jabber server.

Each drop is assigned its very own chat room on our Jabber setup, and whenever a user views the drop, Strophe automatically logs the user into the drop’s chat room. Whenever an event such as a file creation occurs, drop.io's application servers send an XMPP message to the drop’s chat room describing the event.

this rich media live environment is done 100% with cloud computing solutions - as always, drop.io uses zero physical servers.

in our final set of upgrades for the week we made some solid and needed upgrades to drop.io manager - our premium system which allows you centrally administer groups of drops and create and use your own custom templates (with custom settings and permissions.) 

we are proud to officially introduce a new applet from drop.io - playlist.io - with playlist.io you simply upload your personal playlist and get a custom private URL with an easy audio player from which to play your mix.  It is the ideal solution for getting your favorite songs 'into the cloud' so you can listen to them at home, work, or anywhere else you want with zero software.

there is a demo video explaining how to use it at http://drop.io/file/playlistio

using the newly release API base iPhone application 'droppler' (http://bit.ly/EmZVc) you can even stream your playlist right to your iphone.

playlist.io comes packed with additional features so you can fully customize your playlist in almost any way imaginable.  You can even podcast your playlists, so you can even listen to your music through itunes. 

Each playlist can hold 100 mb of audio by defualt, but can be upgraded to almost unlimited storage either by paying $10/gb/year or under a 'drop.io manager' monthly plan.
 
playlist.io is built directly on top of drop.io using vanilla platform customizations which any drop.io manager user can create and deploy on their own.  the applet was constructed simply by creating a drop.io 'template' (code) which customizes the homepage, welcome messages, and the default sidebar modules.  While the drop.io team happened to make playlist.io, literally any of our manager users could have made the same custom applet on their own.

other applets built in the same way on top of drop.io include

phone.io -- free conference calling and voicemail to web/podcast/email/etc.
tweet.io -- push any file or rich media type into your twitter feed on the fly
usend.io - an api app that uploads your file to a drop and sends out an email link on the fly

we are continuing to make it easier and easier to adopt drop.io's simple private sharing platform for your exact needs.  A while back we added some basic customization options on drops... we just added a whole bunch more.  how does it work?  go to http://drop.io, and where it says 'premium code' type in one of the following:

twitter  (http://tweet.io) -- send media via email, mms, voice, and more directly to any number of twitter accounts
paywall (http://paywall.io) -- a simple way to sell digital content with drop.io
phone (http://phone.io) -- free voice conferenceing and voicemail, with RSS and email out
drop.iorange -- just a cool color

when you enter any of the above codes the homepage morphs to accommodate that specific function or branding.  the background changes, the logo changes, and the copy changes.  when you make the drop itself you will notice that there is a custom prompt greeting you to the drop (explaining a specific function) and the right hand rail is customized with modules chosen for the specific function for which the drop is intended. 

this is a nice little parlor trick that allows us to highlight specific drop.io functions - but what is really cool is that anyone with a drop.io manager account can make these on their own.  We are not doing anything custom here.  all you do is create a new 'code' (which is our word for 'template') in the manager application.  Make sure you move on to the customization options, and you will see that you can set all of these custom options at the code level.  Your background and logo carry over, and you can choose to enter any and all of the custom text you want to explain to your users/collaborators how to best use your drops.

to share the custom codes/homepages with collaborators or others, you can tell them to go to drop.io and enter the code name (as in the example above)... or, (and this is the real trick) just send them a link in the form of http://drop.io/?code=CODENAME and they will be right where they need to be (so, for instance, the direct link for the twitter homepage is http://drop.io/?code=twitter). 

a nice little useful trick...  -- a cool video of the homepage morphing is below...

How To Use Drop.io As A Google Notebook Replacement
So, Google has stopped active development of Google Notebook and is no longer accepting new users. This is disappointing because it was kind of awesome -- really userful, intuitive, powerful. The good thing for people who liked Notebook but are in need of a replacement, or heard about it but didn't get a chance to use it, is that drop.io, when coupled with its Firefox Add-on, the Drag & Drop.io, does pretty much everything Notebook did (and more).




What can I do with the Drag & Drop.io add-on that I couldn't with Google Notebook? 

-Drag and drop URLs to save as links
-Drag and drop files from your desktop
-E-mail update notifications to team members/collaborators
-Send notes in via e-mail
-Fax documents in [faxing out too if you have a Premium drop (they're cheap, $10/1 gig/year)]
-Save your content as a single .ZIP archive
-Call in voice messages on a private voicemail number

Drop.io and Google Notebook aren't exactly the same service so to be fair, this isn't a direct, apples-to-apples comparison. But that's not what it's meant to be. We just want to highlight the fact that if you were using Notebook and want an alternative, or if you can't use it because Google has stopped accepting new users, drop.io with its Firefox add-on is a great option.


You can check out the rest of the details at drop.io/googlenotebook

We are proud to be kicking off 2009 by introducing drop.io manager http://manager.drop.io

drop.io manager is a powerful tool for organizations of any shape or size that need a simple, professional, and cost effective way to share media and collaborate.  If you are using drop.io to share files professionally, this is the tool for you.  drop.io manger is based on specific user feature and functionality requests and is closely modeled on our own internal system management tool, and is intended to help you ditch your FTP service for our simpler, faster, and cheaper alternative. 

drop.io manager gives you a single interface with powerful administrative, customization, and organizational controls.  Using the tool you can:

1.  Create your own custom upgrade codes with pre-set styles and permissions and some premium options.
2.  Centrally catalog, control, and administer ALL the drops made by your organization.
3.  Make as many drops as you want of any size, and pay based on monthly use.

If you are more of a visual person, here is the quick demo video - but generally think of drop.io manager as a super simple and lightweight 'CMS' for drop.io

We will, of course, continue to our free basic consumer service, but for those that have been relying on drop.io to simply and privately share more and more information, manager will be a big help.  For those that want to get up and going quickly with manager, sign up [here] for a special rate on an account which can manage up to 10 GBs and 25 drop, we very much look forward to your feedback. 

Manager is already full featured, and we have been using it (along with a few of our earliest adopters) for a while with great success, but it is going to keep getting better.  You will not be disappointed with the investment. :)


So, what will 2009 look like?

The gameplan is always evolving, but out of a recent team meeting here is at least a high level sketch of where we are going based on where we have been.  The company took 2008 head on with a strong mandate to innovate with new product/features on the concept of simple private sharing based on a model of building new Inputs, Access, and Output features.  With the strong backing of RRE Ventures and DFJ Gotham we pursued some new highly useful functionality.

2009 is REFINE REFINE REFINE.  We have a few game changing new pieces (coming online in the coming weeks), but the big thrust for this year is to make our services easier to understand, easier to use, and ever faster.  We are going to make it simple to privately share anything with exactly what you want with whom you want how you want. We both very much want and need your help in this process.  ~ happy January from the drop.io team

During our redesign we created the concept of sidebar 'modules' which can show up on the right hand side of every drop.  If you are logged in as an administrator you can get sidebar modules which make it easy to customize the styling and permissions of a drop, if you set a location on your drop you get a map displaying where in the world your drop is, if you want a logo on your drop that can go in the sidebar as well, etc...

We are happy to announce that we just enabled a new function which allows you to very easily drag and drop customize the sidebar on any drop. 

If you are logged in as an administrator (or just created a new drop)  you can add or remove extra modules, reorder any of the elements, or completely hide the sidebar if you don't like it.  Just click 'customize' at the bottom of the sidebar!

Most importantly, with our 'alpha' product drop.io manager, you can pre-set how you would like your sidebar to render for all drops made with your custom codes - so if you have an organization or small business you can deeply control the look and feel and customization of your drop.  Think of this as another way that drop.io is striving to be the simplest way to privately share files and information with exactly whom you want, how you want.

Some of the modules you now have access to include:  drop statistics, archive/zip quick link, global announcements, drop.io info, etc.

Mike, who quarterbacked the project, did a 1 minute video explaining the new function (below).  If you think of some new optional sidebar modules which you would like to see, let us know!

Yesterday, my internet connection was slowing to a crawl so in my boldest 'veteran of many cable modem and router wars' voice, I declared that I was going to unplug and then re-plug in the switch that gives the cabal known as the 'inner circle' its vital torrent of digital information (read:cat memes).

As we, of which I am delighted, have no cubicles, offices or dividers, save perhaps our monitors, this was overheard by my coworker, Adam Glasgall. He, without hesitation, ambled hurriedly over to my desk, pen and legal pad in hand, and began to explain why the switch was 'dumb' and it didn't need to be reset. He sketched out the '7-Layer Burrito' (OSI Seven Layer Model), enumerating the levels and detailing what they were responsible for. Apparently layers 5 and 6 are mailing it in.

This is certainly not an advanced concept in computing but I have a background in finance and not tech. It was attentively listened to and greatly appreciated.

In addition to a forum for regex jokes, knife-car races and conversations about robot armies that man our uploaders, drop.io is also a place where collaboration and learning are part of the culture and daily experience.

No one here is on an island.

This is one of the reasons I love walking in the door of Suite 413 on 68 Jay Street (plus, Sam is going to let me pick out the plants for the office ... wicked.)

Peter Frasca
vox populi

One of our most popular applications is the firefox plug-in the 'drag and drop.io'.  We released a major update to the plugin last week, and in the holiday madness totally forgot to write a quick blogpost explaining what changed.  Happily, Ars Technica did a great job covering for us (http://bit.ly/ncPY) but we figured it was worth a quick post after the fact nonetheless.  

There is a video explanation at http://drop.io/firefox -- for fans of fb connect, check out the magic at the end... but for those sticking to the blog, the new and improved app lets you:

1.  drag and drop entire folders (not just groups of files) from your desktop, uploading the entire contents for private sharing on the fly

2.  drag and drop files, links, and even paragraphs of html text from other web pages/tabs directly into drops, just by selecting what you want and releasing on the '.io'

3.  choose to either have uploads go by default to a new drop, or always to a specific default drop (most requested feature by V1 users)

4.  pre-define all the settings on the new drops made by the application, including having the application automatically use a 'code' which customizes backgrounds, logos, and the look andfeel of your drops

5.  bookmark pages with shortcut keys which allow you to send links to web pages to a drop while you browse on the fly -- (ctrl-shift-d = instantly send a link to your defined drop (or a new one) while browsing...)

6.  drop files to your facebook feed with Facebook Connect integration.  Meaning, you can literally drag and drop any file from your desktop, media from across the web and links INSTANTLY to your facebook feed.  you can literally hit ctrl-shift-d while browsing the web and send links to your fb feed.

Almost most importantly, the drag-and-drop.io now uses the publicly available drop.io API. 

This means that uploads are faster and more consistent, and it allows the drag-and-drop.io to have a progress bar to help you know where you are in your file upload.  

We worked really hard on the details of the drag and drop.io.  There are minor details we are very proud of, like you can actually have multiple uploads going to multiple different new drops all at the same time... but we will leave some of that nuance for you to explore.  you can get the plugin directly from Mozilla

A few months ago we integrated with facebook connect while it was in beta.  We are happy to announce that moments after Connect launched today we took the feature live (well, ok, technically it had been on our live site and just 'hidden' for a while), but tada!

How does it work?  (on any drop click 'share' --> 'facebook' --> 'connect')

By clicking 'share' via 'facebook' you can now connect any drop to which you have access to to your facebook feed.  Just like our twitter integration, you can now directly update your facebook feed with ANY media added to a drop.  This means that you can not only add files, documents, pictures, and video directly to you feed but you can literally leave voice mail on your facebook feed for your friends (by just dialing your drop and leaving a message), email your feed, fax your facebook friends, and even use our firefox plugin to drag and drop files into your fb feed ... and of course download all the original files back regardless of input.

Why?

drop.io is about simple private sharing.  add any media by any digital input, set permissions, share with exactly whom you want how you want.  One place there are a lot of people you might want to 'share' with is facebook - so it is natural for us to allow you to 'share' to your facebook feed.  We are the I/O, facebook is one of your communities.

Interesting...

1.  you can connect one drop to as many facebook profiles as you want
2.  you can connect your facebook profile to as many drops as you want
3.  FB connect doesn't circumvent drop.io passwords, so if you have one tell the friends you want to have access the magic word.. and remember, you can always download original assets with drop.io

thanks & congrats to dave morin and the whole FB team for getting connect off -- we think it is great

we are adding screenshots and a demo video link at http://drop.io/fbconnect  or go right to the screencast

as 'hopefully' you noticed - we worked really hard over the last several months redesigning drop.io to be easier to use, more intuitive, more customizable and faster.  There are still many more improvements and refinements on the way, but we are honestly quite proud of how far we have come towards our goal of 'simple private sharing' -

we recently noticed that the 2008 'crunchies' are looking for nominations to decide the 'best design' award, and we would love it if you would take the time to nominate us once -- or, if you are a true zealot, every day for the next several days :)

http://bit.ly/PrNw

warmest holiday regards (and look for some huge new features in the next few weeks)  - the drop.io team

A few weeks ago MTV International asked us if drop.io could help them with a particularly important project...  they had put together an extensive catalog of content (pictures, videos, documents, etc) for the 'staying alive' HIV and AIDS awareness campaign, and needed a way to share it with a wide but specific set of broadcast partners and press.

So, we showed them how they could set up a series of drops to serve as a resource area for Staying Alive’s wide-ranging catalogue of programming... all leading up to the premiere of the documentary The Diary of Kelly Rowland (Scheduled to air on MTV around the world during World AIDS Day on Monday December 1, 2008, the documentary features global superstar and founding member of Destiny's Child, Kelly Rowland, and is earmarked to celebrate MTV’s 10th anniversary of its Staying Alive campaign, underscoring its continuing dedication and commitment in the fight against HIV/AIDS.)

We were thrilled to help as their 'global dedicated web partner' -- but, in this case, we are all the more happy to help them simply and privately distribute content to partners which supports such an admirable cause.  you can learn more about how we worked with MTV International on this project at:

http://drop.io/pr/asset/drop-io-teams-for-staying-alive

Yesterday drop.io celebrated the start of our second year by launching a 100% redesign of the front end.

Today it is Jacob R's turn.  Jacob is responsible for all things development and you can thank him for coordinating much of the upgrades you have seen in the last year - and a few more you will see soon.  Happy third decade Jacob! -- from the whole drop.io team, and - of course - sr. mini wheats

The time has come, the API has been released!  Don't wait, go visit http://api.drop.io now to get started with the easiest way to input and output content for applications.

But before you go, check out a few of our example apps that we built using the API in a few hours...

http://collab.io - collaborate with your teams using Drop.io.
http://usend.io - send large files to people quickly and easily.
http://hahayoureinaphoto.com - post humorous photos of your friends as payback!

All of the code is available online, including pre-built client libraries in Ruby, C#, and Javascript to help jump start your projects!

What is the API and how do I use it? The Drop.io API is a simple way for developers to create tools and applications on top of Drop.io's platform. You'll have access to everything that Drop.io provides in an easy to use interface.  So think of some ideas and start remixing digital content on the internet's switchboard!

Jake Good
Platform Evangelist

And of course we'd love to hear about your projects and ideas... shoot me an email at jake [@] dropio.com

The business perspective 

In the last few months it has become a relatively standard practice that people start building test web-apps in the AWS cloud and then move them into a colo as they gain traction.  We are doing the opposite, and so I thought it might be worth a brief explanation.  

In the beginning

In November of 2007 (almost exactly a year ago) we launched drop.io with a footprint that straddled physical hardware in co-location and Amazon Web Services.  At the time, many people told us that using AWS at all was a provocative choice - but after running a variety of scenarios it seemed obvious.  At very very high volume we could certainly get better 'pricing' in a pure colo setup, but we reasoned that:

1. It was critical for our app to be highly available, and Amazon could probably do a better job than we could.

2. We couldn't easily model our growth trajectory which would make procuring the right amount of hardware hard, and force us to navigate potentially crippling lead times

3. If we did buy, we would probably have to over-buy, which would be bad news for a bootstrapped startup (at the time)

4. Since we were starting from zero, we couldn't yet buy physical hardware at scale anyway

5. Most importantly, compute and storage seem tantalizingly like commodity, and we had bigger fish to fry with our small team

The upshot was clear.   The fully baked cost of managing a conversion farm and storage on our own vs. having Amazon do it clearly staked out in Amazon's favor.

Over the last year

Over the last year we have been very happy with our setup.  Our colo partner, honeycomb, did a fabulous job helping us on the ground with our physical footprint, and Amazon has done a great job keeping our conversion and storage chugging along.  As we all know, there were a few very public and very unfortunate outages on the Amazon side, but being 100% honest with ourselves, as a brand new company we would have probably cause more downtime ourselves if we were running the conversion and storage for the app.  So, while we were not happy that Amazon went down at all, net net we consider ourselves as having been ahead on the year.

In this first year we also grew very fast as an app and as a team.  We are now handling deep into the hundreds of thousands of users interacting with millions of pieces of media every month - and the velocity of growth is increasing sharply.  On the team side, we went from 2 to 14, and brought on significant capital resources to help us build against our vision of 'simple private sharing'.
 

Going 100% 'cloud'

And yet, despite the fact that we have the resources to build out our own footprint, we are choosing to go the other way, and move 100% into the cloud.  This decision came after a lot of modeling and some very hard thinking.  A few things have changed from our initial calculus.  First we can generally model how much we grow month over month which would make procurement planning easier.  Second, and probably more importantly, we have scale.  We could actually buy in units large enough to get some pricing advantages on physical procurement.  Finally, we have financial resources.  Since we are not living completely hand to mouth we can look a few months out and make financial decisions on a slightly longer time frame.  

All that said, the most important factors have not changed - in fact, they have compounded....

1.  It is even more important to be highly available - Amazon can still probably do a better job than we can.

2.  We can model current growth, but with a company of 14, we can build some serious product very quickly.  The faster we are as a team the less we can really model growth.  

3.  It has become totally clear that to survive and grow we need to be incredibly nimble.  If we see an opportunity and bang out a product extension in two days, it is completely unacceptable to need to wait to get the physical infrastructure in place to support turning it on.

4.  Our mandate as a company is to invest in the highest return projects with every dollar and hour possible.  Theoretically getting 10% more efficient by managing our own hardware (for the record, we actually think the opposite is the case) is a bad use of our resources - it is EC 10, comparative advantage, t-shirts and aircraft, thank you Marty Feldstein.  

5.  We have a few other insights about the flexibility it gives us with our specific product and core strategy which we will be holding a bit closer to the chest for a while, but you will see soon enough.

The Upshot:

As a Startup, we adore variable cost and absolutely loathe fixed cost.  Moving our footprint fully int AWS means that our largest fixed 'cost' is our rent (and I don't think that is going variable anytime soon).  Until we hear otherwise (please enlighten us) we think we are the largest rails app in the world that has gone to 0% physical hardware...  We think that this is an enormous deal.  We are proud to have done it, we are very excited to be exploring uncharted waters, and happy to report that we have already identified several new flexibilities that will give us incredible range, and we think some serious competitive advantage.  If you catch any of us in the street, ask us - the whole team is more than happy to wax poetic on the topic.

note:  for the more technically minded we will be following up shortly with a post from Lee, further, the press release is at http://drop.io/weareinthecloud

|sam lessin, http://drop.io/swl, http://twitter.com/lessin|

We know that IT departments are under a lot of pressure and have the unenviable task of policing their networks. This occasionally means that collaboration sites, like ours, get blocked. This is usually done automatically because we have the term 'file-sharing' in our description.

A few people have emailed us asking for help, so we've put together a little one-pager (download it here) to explain who we are, what we do, and why IT should allow drop.io to be a part of your workflow. If drop.io is being blocked at your company or organization, you can share this with the powers that be to help remedy the situation.

As always, if there is a need for follow up, e-mail us at contact@dropio.com. We'll do our best to clear things up.

Peter Frasca
vox populi

Dear friends: 

Given the intense recent focus on the future of venture capital (VC), we have decided to make it the primary theme of this month’s Y+30 Meetup.

On Thursday, October 23rd from 7:00-9:00 PM at Drop.io headquarters - 68 Jay Street, suite #413, Brooklyn (dumbo), NY - the VC industries’ leading visionaries will share their long-term outlook for the changing VC landscape over the next 30 years. 

Specifically, they will tackle the question: "What will Venture Capital look like in 30 years?" This will include an absolutely fabulous panel moderated by Stuart Ellman, Managing Partner of RRE Ventures, with confirmed panelists:

- Daniel Schultz, Founding Managing Director DFJ Gotham,

- Mo Koyfman, Principal Spark Capital

- Bryan Birsic, Village Ventures
- Andrew Parker, Union Square Ventures

- Jeff Stewart, Angel & Multi-Time VC backed founder

We trust that this diverse set of voices will guide a highly spirited debate!

To RSVP, or for more information about the meetup, please visit: http://future.meetup.com/63/

We look forward to seeing you!

Giovanna
The Grand Organizer

With the recent release of Drop.io's location-based features and my new found hobby for Geocaching, I would like to now propose an idea for a super-awesome merger of the two. Yes, you heard me: super-awesome.

In case you aren't familiar with it, Geocaching is a world-wide treasure hunting game in which people hide things called "geocaches" anywhere in the world, and then record the GPS coordinates of those locations online at geocaching.com. Others later look up the coordinates of said geocaches and then go on all sorts of adventures finding them. Typically, there are a bunch of random items inside that its finders have left (from what I've seen, ranging from toy aliens to smiley-face stickers), but perhaps the most interesting and rewarding item that can be found in most geocaches is a log book. This is the place where the tired, sweaty, mud-covered, and yet still extremely excited geocachers can sign their names, write down how cool they thought the hiding place was, and catalog what random trinkets they took from and left inside the geocache.

But here's the problem: the log books inside the geocaches are often physical notebooks which are inherently limited in function. Geocachers can only leave written memories, and once all pages have been used up, no one else can log his/her find. Geocaching.com does also have online logging and picture-posting features, however, there is no way to preclude anyone from looking at them. Therefore, the few geocachers that do use those features are careful to censor themselves and not to post too much information that could give away the geocache's location. As a result, these comments are usually just: "Found it! Great hiding spot!"

So today I propose to the geocaching community an extension to their already awesome game using location-based drops on Drop.io as private and dynamic log books. Here's how I envision it would work:

1) When people create a new geocache, they also create a drop at that location using our nifty little application at location.drop.io.

2) They give the drop a name that is different from the name of the geocache itself, give it a password, and set the default view to 'blog.'

3) They print out an official Drop.io/Geocaching log book card like the mock-up below, and fill in the drop's password.

                  

4) They put this card inside the geocache and hide it somewhere as usual.

5) Others then go to geocaching.com and find the coordinates of a geocache that they would like to seek out on that particularly sunny day.

                                                            ...funness...

6) They find the geocache and the card inside, find the drop at the same coordinates as the geocache, and log in using the password provided on the card. 

7) They can now post any notes, pictures, audio, or video pertaining to their geocaching expedition as well as enjoy viewing the notes, pictures, audio, and video that other finders have left, all organized neatly by date, just like a typical log book.

The benefits of this scheme are that a wide, rich range of media can be stored and shared, only those who have physically found the geocache can access the log book, and once the drop's size limit is reached, another drop can easily be created at that same location.

Intrigued? E-mail me at shaun@dropio.com and let me know your thoughts. If all goes well, I'll work with geocaching.com to make this official.


Shaun Salzberg
Developer

shaun@dropio.com
drop.io/shaun
geo.meetup.com/134

Sam Speaks at Ignite Launch

Check out the slides from Sam's presentation and a short video at: www.drop.io/ignitesam!

Best,

Giovanna Mingarelli
IW Specialist

First, I have to say that Twitter is one the best and most fascinating communication services on the web. There is no end to the utility of the service, and it's ability to bring joy to readers and publishers alike. My only concern is that such a fantastic means of communication could eventually fade out because it resists becoming a standard format. I believe that some of Twitter's recent mainstream growth is not entirely due to an increase in the interest of Twitter specially, but rather an increase in the popularity of the microblogging format in general. Many other popular services (Facebook, FriendFeed, Tumblr) continue to increase their focus on the microblogging format by adding similar features, in part causing a shift towards the general acceptance and familiarity of this format.

From a historical perspective, AOL, CompuServe, and a hand full of other companies were able to capitalize on the quick adoption of email in the web 0.1 (not a typo) days, just as Twitter is doing with microblogging today. Originally AOL and others created a walled garden where email wasn't a general form of communication from all people to all other people. It was an AOL-specific or CompuServe-specific communication format, only allowing users on AOL to email other users on AOL. This caused the format to become nonstandard, with several companies having different feature sets attached to their email (AOL had the ability to unsend an email if it hadn't been read yet). It wasn't until 1993 that companies started attaching their proprietary email systems onto the Internet and accepting a general email format which would be universally accepted. It is an obvious statement to say that the decision to expand email from a monopoly controlled communication format into an open standard greatly benefited Internet users (and society). Why should microblogging be any different?

Twitter, with over 4 million users (more than all other microblogging services combined) may be in a similar situation as AOL was in the early 90's. Twitter only allows for communication with other Twitter users, it has the ability to add and remove features to the format (like the fabled "track" feature) at will, and continues to suffer from growing pains (see fail whale). I believe it's clear that microblogging should to be an open standard where Twitter reigns as the most popular provider among many. For this to happen Twitter would either have to push for it's format to become the standard (which would be great, since it would cause them to make certain features guaranteed) or Twitter would have to adopt another open standard. I genuinely hope that one of these two things happens, for the good of the format - but in the end if it doesn't at least twitter is still fun.

Mike Singleton
UX Developer
http://drop.io/mikesingleton

The name is Jake Good... I'm one of the lead developers here at drop.io and I'm excited to pre-announce the Earth shattering drop.io API. "Pre-announce? Earth shattering?"

The Systems and Costs of Privacy in the 2.0 paradigm
a re-post from sam's personal blog (http://drop.io/swl)

It is frequently suggested, in both the popular media and academic press, that the Internet is essentially re-writing the ‘rules’ of privacy. This is simply not true. ‘Privacy’ always has, and always will be, based on two pillars, trust and transparency. Neither the rules of privacy, nor the way in which they are applied, have changed. What has occurred, and what has been misinterpreted as fundamental change, is that the relative costs of privacy and publicity have dramatically shifted, resulting in people sharing more information, more publicly. The misreading of this shift has driven a focus on building new platforms for private sharing based on the ‘security’ model, requiring greater and greater amounts of identification and verification. This is ultimately an inappropriate response, and we are witnessing the beginning of its demise. The next iteration of ‘private’ sharing solutions are based on sharing as little collateral information as possible, rather than deploying additional metadata in an attempt to lock down the data itself.

It is important to first set the parameters of exactly what is meant by privacy, for its definition is not always consistent. Privacy, as it will be discussed here, is the ability to share information with specific counterparts, without exposing it beyond the lines which the ‘owner’ of the content intends. Privacy pertains to issues of the transmission and retransmission of information among people. This is distinct from security, which pertains to preventing information from being exposed through targeted exploit.

Every private transaction must satisfy two critical pre-requisites: trust and transparency. A transaction can only be private to the extent that the person sharing information trusts the recipient, and that he or she transparently signals exactly how the information shared is to be treated. This holds true for both individuals and systems. Technology cannot prevent friends or associates from passing on secrets, one can only pick trustworthy counterparts and ask them not to tell. This means that the goal of private systems must be to deliver an experience that models the ‘trusted and transparent’ in-person conversation as closely as possible.

While the basic prerequisites of privacy are not changing, the cost structure of sharing very much is. The cost of distributing content has been falling as technology has improved. The Internet is a drastic step change in this direction, but it is hardly the first. Most recently the ‘web 2.0’ movement has lowered the cost of public distribution by paying people who make their content public in one form or another. This advertising supported communication model (primarily centered on search and social applications) has brought it to the point that for many types of ‘user generated’ content, the wide distribution of information is negatively expensive.

In contrast, the costs of privacy have risen on a relative, if not absolute, basis. It is now far more expensive to keep content private than it is to publish it widely. This is not because of the often cited rise in security costs. Rather, it is simply because the costs associated with publishing information have fallen far more rapidly than the costs of private sharing. The tools for private sharing are less developed than the tools for public sharing. So, whereas for all of human history it has been more expensive to share information widely than privately, the reverse is now true.

To help users control private information, a wide range of providers have developed complex mechanisms that require ever greater amounts of user input. The most recognizable form of this is social networking. These systems help users construct trusted identities and then define sets of relationships, roles, and permissions to define how they want their information and content to be accessed. The central conceit is that additional layers of information can be deployed to seal private information behind a complex maze of accounts and permissions.

This model is unsustainable. It asks users to trust services and people with even more rich private information, defining identity and relationships (accounts, email addresses, other personal identifiers). By centralizing identity and ceding the metadata necessary to define the accessibility of information, these services are raising the total cost of private sharing for individuals, and increasing the potential for abuse. In many cases, the systems are just too complicated and users opt not to use them. In other cases, the extra data creates new points of vulnerability.

Out of this current state, a new model is emerging: ‘simple privacy.’ This model has been referred to as ‘casual privacy’, or ‘data-poor’ privacy (as opposed to ‘data rich’ or ‘verbose’ privacy). The fundamental basis of the movement, which is ultimately a return to historical norms, is that less is more. Within this construct, people share exactly what they want with whom they want and for as long as they want, without extraneous information or metadata. This model minimizes the informational footprint needed to privately share information and does not require embedded accounts, identity, search, or any social elements. Rather than enabling content to last ‘forever,’ it is removed as soon as it is no longer needed, and provides revocable access. Users share simply by transmitting specific un-guessable locations and passwords off one platform and on to another. As a result, privacy is heightened. It is impossible for a system to expose maliciously or accidentally that which it does not know. This aims to mirror as closely as possible the private, in-person conversation in the middle of a busy café where, without context, private things can be openly discussed. Even though others within earshot might listen, they lack the context to understanding the nature of the discussed topic.

It is likely that this model of private sharing will prevail again, as it has in the past, and this period will be seen as a momentary deviation from the historical norm, in which privacy is simpler and easier to achieve than publicity.