Dropbox introduces new API features (opens in new tab)

I think fundamentally Dropbox's move away from the filesystem by exposing an API like this and through application acquisitions (music and mail) is about trying to become the Apple of personal data.

Dropbox has done a phenomenal job of taking a complex challenge (file sync) and making an incredibly simple user experience. Extending that strategy into other common tasks with new and purchased apps could be very successful. The big element missing is BaaS (back-end as a service) for data and events that aren't files. Given the poor track record of services like iCloud, you can imagine a lot of developers adopting the Dropbox API and in a few years most iOS devices might be running a combination of official Dropbox apps (replacements for itunes, mail, and maybe calendar) and many other essentially stateless apps that use the Dropbox API for sync and storage.

In the short term this could be very convenient for users and developers, but in the long run it creates another monolithic, centralized platform. This kind of functionality needs to be delivered as a protocol so users can choose service providers who compete on price, features, and privacy instead of being citizens of a particular platform (Facebook, Apple, Google, MSFT, or increasingly Dropbox).

It's a step toward evolution: Dropbox becoming a platform and not just a cloudy app. I wonder, though, about the amount of storage available at the free level -- is it enough to support a true platform?

Well, from a quick look at the Datastore API, they provide conflict resolution and offline support, which are pretty big if you're working on a mobile application.

> that statistic implies that on average, Dropbox users only make changes to ~6 files in their Dropbox per day.

I believe it. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I usually only write to a few files from Dropbox in any given day. I read those files often, but I rarely write unless I'm doing something like uploading pictures from my camera.

Makes sense to me. Not every user uses Dropbox every single day. Also, the 175m number is not qualified as people who have used the app in a certain amount of time, so that could include inactive accounts.

If you consider a "file sync" event as a single file being pulled to a single device, it could be 1 file to 6 devices per day which seems a lot more realistic to me. Especially when you consider teams that are probably syncing files across tens of devices multiple times per day.

Does 6 seem high or low to you?

And this is what Hacker News is, now? And the first comment, to boot?

Dropbox is incredibly easy and convenient to use. It's very simple, and that's what makes it great. It's simple enough for almost anyone to use. I've pointed tech-unsavvy friends and family at Dropbox with great success. It's just a folder on your computer that magically syncs to all your other computers too.

Now, there's nothing in that which justifies having a developer conference. I definitely do not understand that. But the Dropbox service itself deserves the praise it gets.

I am with you on this one.

I only got dropbox installed on my PC because we needed to exchange some files with an external contractor that only used Dropbox.

As soon as the project was finished I removed it from my PC.

What about the Box and Twilio conferences?

I agree. The first thing I did when I saw this announcement was look for the REST API. Surely, those existing platform specific libraries are built on a REST API, so why not document and release them.