Dropbox Sets Google and Facebook in Its Sights With a Slew of New Apps by Marcus Wohlsen

Images: Courtesy of Dropbox

Dropbox is going head-to-head with some of the largest companies on the net.

This morning, the San Francisco startup unveiled several additions to its flagship file-sharing service as well as some entirely new services, directly challenging outfits like Google and Facebook and underlining its ambition to become Silicon Valley’s next big company.

For the average internet user, the biggest news is the arrival of a new photo-storing and sharing app, dubbed Carousel. The app is available for iOS and Android, and the team that built it was led by Gentry Underwood, who previously oversaw the elegantly designed Mailbox email app acquired by Dropbox last year. Carousel takes photos stored in Dropbox and organizes them into galleries according to when and where they were taken, and it includes sharing tools that closely resemble the way you send photos via SMS text messaging on your smartphone.

The San Francisco startup unveiled several additions to its flagship file-sharing service as well as some entirely new services, directly challenging outfits like Google and Facebook.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston said the app is part of a larger effort to create all sorts of new apps for your daily life. He calls this the company’s “home for life” strategy, an approach that puts Dropbox squarely in Facebook’s competitive space — something that was underscored by a product-launch video that resembled nothing so much as the video Facebook put out when it launched its new Timeline photo interface in 2011.

“We’re moving from one app called Dropbox to this whole family of apps, this whole set of services designed to work better together,” Houston said.

In keeping with that theme, Houston said that Dropbox for Business — which lets a corporate IT department control a separate file-sharing folder attached to your main Dropbox account — has emerged from its limited release period and is now available to all businesses. And the company has beefed up its primary service in other ways. The coolest new tool is a real-time collaboration widget that lets users know when two of more people are using the same file. Currently available for Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, this tool adds an icon to the edge of these apps when someone else opens a file. If you then click on this icon, you can open up a chat window, which also includes an “update” link to sync up changes with everyone else who’s currently in the file.

As an engineering feat, real-time file-syncing is one of the tougher problems in the world of online consumer software. And it’s an extremely competitive space, with Google Docs and Microsoft as well as startups like Box.com battling it out for a place on your machine.

The company also announced the long-awaited release of Mailbox for Android. And for iOS users who have already come to depend on Mailbox’s sweet swipe tool — a kind of snooze button for your email messages — you can now do the same thing on your PC with the limited beta release of the new Mailbox for Desktop.

By expanding beyond its original mission of backing up and syncing files and going up against bigger, more entrenched competitors like Google and Facebook, Dropbox is taking a big risk. But its approach reflects a savvy understanding of how those companies managed to grow into the giants of the net. As Dropbox expands its family of services, it locks consumers into ever-greater dependency. Storing files is one thing, but adding email, photos, and collaboration creates a “home” that’s hard to leave once you go inside.

Source: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/dropbox-google-facebook/?mbid=social_fb

Facebook has 100 million active users in India

The ascent of Facebook in India has been speedy and has been powered by the mobile phone. When the American company set up its first India office in 2010, in Hyderabad, it had 8 million users in the country. Further, according to Facebook, 84 million of its 100 million users in India access the social networking site from their mobile devices.

Facebook, which was set up in 2004, had 1.23 billion users across the world, as of December 31, 2013. "If Facebook continues its current growth trajectory, we can see it as a core communications tool for the world," says Neha Dharia, analyst with UK-based research firm Ovum. "This besides being a media platform where users can share and engage in a range of media such as videos, pictures and games. We expect to see a stronger move around storage (cloud-based) and utility services from Facebook."

For Facebook, the US remains its biggest market, with about 183 million users, though perhaps not for long, given the inflexion point India is at with regards to Internet usage, especially on the mobile. According to Olivan, who is one of the three people in the company who report directly to founder Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is now "looking forward" to 1 billion users in India, a numerical figure it intends to chase with specific initiatives aimed at increasing connectivity, affordability and relevance. "That (1 billion) is a different focus and challenge," he says.

Olivan says much of the challenge of going from 1 million to 10 million in India was about optimising the product for users. For example, removing the condition that a user needed to have an email ID of an American college to access Facebook. From 10 million to 100 million, he adds, it was about improving experience on low-end devices and offering it in languages other than English. "For 1 billion, we need easy connectivity, the biggest challenge of our generation," he says.

One of the initiatives it is focused on to widen connectivity is internet.org, a partnership it has with six mobile technology companies to provide affordable Internet access to the unconnected. It is also working with telecom companies to increase data adoption among users in emerging markets like India. On this trajectory, it's only a matter of time before the Facebook user base in India crosses that of the US.

Source:http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-04-08/news/48971129_1_access-facebook-1-billion-users-javier-olivan

 

Measuring Your Facebook Page Performance by Irfan Ahmad

 

Are you trying to figure out how much your Facebook followers really like your brand?

 

Facebook is becoming a challenging marketing platform to understand for small businesses. In fact, many business marketers don't understand it at all. They don't know whether their Facebook page is performing well or not, or should we be getting more likes or shares based on their number of the followers.

 

Therefore, the Quintly team has analyzed different key performance Indicators (KPIs) for various page sizes, that will give you a clear idea whether your page is doing well or not. A key takeaway is: The total number of fans is one of the most important metrics for Facebook page admins to measure their ROI (you can compare your total number of fans in below chart).

 

Source: http://socialmediatoday.com/irfan-ahmad/2318441/measuring-your-facebook-page-performance-infographic