Dropbox's new app called Carousel

Date : 10 Nisan 2014 Perşembe - 12:53, Category : Technology

Dropbox's new app called Carousel

Dropbox unveiled a suite of new apps on Wednesday as part of a broader push to show it is more than about storing and sharing files.Dropbox also introduced a new app called Carousel which is a gallery feature for all user's photos and videos.

Dropbox's new app called Carousel

The effort is especially crucial as larger tech giants like GoogleGOOGL +1.68% and MicrosoftMSFT +1.63% dramatically push down storage prices. 'We're moving from one app called Dropbox to this whole family of apps,' Chief Executive Drew Houston said during an en event in San Francisco. A new mobile app called Carousel will let Dropbox users scroll through a visual gallery of their photos organized by the time and place they were snapped. With a few swipes, users can also quickly send hundreds of photos to friends. Dropbox is a great place to store files, but it's not a great place to view the photos and video you have there, said Gentry Underwood, a designer at Dropbox known for creating the Mailbox app that the company bought a little more than a year ago. 'What people want in mobile is dedicated apps that do one thing and do them really, really well,' Underwood said. 'Swiss army knives lose to specialized tools every time.' The app may put Dropbox into closer competition with Facebook, one of the most popular photo-sharing sites along with Instagram and Yahoo's Flickr. In an interview, Houston said Carousel fills a need that Facebook doesn't: storing photos privately and sharing them with select groups of friends. 'There's always been some overlap with our services,' Houston said about Facebook. 'But when you look at what we're doing, we feel like Carousel is doing something completely new.' Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a longtime friend of Houston's, attended the Dropbox event but did not speak on stage or conduct interviews. 'I don't think anyone is going to use Facebook less because of Carousel,' Houston said. Dropbox now has 275 million users, up from 200 million last November. Another big push for the company is business software. A version of Dropbox with additional security and sharing features that was tested with a few customers last year is now available for everyone, Houston said. Using a new feature called Project Harmony, workers can quickly see what changes their colleagues have made to documents. The new collaboration feature could help it square off with Box, the storage startup preparing to hold an initial public offering. 'I think Dropbox had to respond to Box's IPO, and this is the way to do it,' said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who was on hand at the event. 'The Harmony platform redefines their product and gives them a competitive advantage that we haven't seen in our industry before.' At today's event, the company also unveiled new versions of its Mailbox e-mail app for Google Android devices as well as for desktop computers. Houston has bolstered his management bench. Dennis Woodside, the former head of Motorola Mobility, joined as Dropbox's operating chief last month, adding public-company experience that Houston lacks. And after interviewing several outside candidates for the job of chief financial officer, Houston promoted business executive Sujay Jaswa to the role, entrusting an insider with little executive experience in a key role. 'It was an easy decision,' Houston said about promoting Jaswa. 'Everybody gave me the same advice, which is, when you have someone really great, you give them as big a challenge as they can tackle.' The company also recently added Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State, to its board. Dropbox raised $350 million earlier this year from investors including BlackRock, T. Rowe Price and Morgan Stanley Investment Management in a funding round that valued that the six-year-old startup at $10 billion. Houston says he doesn't spend time thinking about an IPO yet. The large amount of cash Dropbox has raised means it can continue to put off the distracting process of going public. 'We've raised plenty of money so there's not really a lot of urgency and needing to be a public company,' he said. 'The tank is already full.'Source: www.blogs.wsj.com

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