> This is good news for both companies, specifically Dropbox. This brings an all new audience to the service, which has become a mainstay in the workplace. The company has yet to crack the consumer area
That's completely backwards. Dropbox started as a consumer tool and is now creeping into the workplace.
>That's completely backwards. Dropbox started as a consumer tool and is now creeping into the workplace.
You're completely behind the curve. People have been using Dropbox to do their work from its' very early days. This is nothing new, they're just making it more "official".
I don't know a single person who uses dropbox for personal stuff, but I know tons of businesses in the furniture industry that use it all the time. For them it's only second to ftp. So it's my anecdote against yours, showing opposite things.
Worth mentioning that companies such as Box specifically position themselves as the enterprise-focused alternative to consumer storage solutions (read: Dropbox).
I think it's pretty widely accepted that Dropbox is used for personal stuff a lot. I know at least a dozen people who use it, including people who don't work anywhere near tech.
In fact, remote storing of business data is a huge red flag for a lot of people, so many businesses do not use the service.
Filmmaking, and particularly indie filmmaking, is a very distributed operation, in terms of assigning work and often in geographical terms as well.
You may or may not have an office for the project, you may or may not have a base of operations. You'll have dozens of people who need to coordinate frequently (constantly, really), though. And Dropbox is a major help.
Scripts, schedules, budgets, art, paperwork (reams and reams of paperwork), call sheets, gear lists, location scout photos, maps, breakdowns of 100 different sorts, VFX tests, various collections of footage (though production footage tends to be large enough to warrant sneakernet), etc etc.
I sometimes do coodinator work of various sorts on low-budget movies, music videos, etc. Dropbox made very quick inroads into that world. Even if the production doesn't have one for the whole project (and they should), departments will often set up their own. Particularly art departments, with their 50-bajillion details to track.
I've got a couple of film projects I'm developing with partners, and we use Dropbox from very early in the process. Scripts, storyboards, concept art, etc. One of our partners is in Portland, and another in New Zealand, but Dropbox keeps us all on the same page (along with Skype and Gmail, of course).
True, I thought of it as "cute" and used it to send big WAV files and such between artist friends when collaborating on a project. Really made it easier than walking someone on how to FTP onto my colo webhost.
Then the entire Corp Comms department at my old work used it almost exclusively with all their vendors for PSDs, PPT Slidedecks, TIFFs... Basically any deliverable.
That's completely backwards. Dropbox started as a consumer tool and is now creeping into the workplace.