Dude, where’s my stuff?!

If you haven’t yet heard of Dropbox, the video below is a very good introduction to the problem it is trying to solve:

Another product, ZumoDrive, which I use on a daily basis, offers very similar features to solve the same problem.

Fifteen years ago, your cell phone was a cell phone: you used it to make phone calls. If you had a computer, it was mostly likely a desktop. If you had a computer at home, it was probably the only one, shared between family members. If you were lucky, you had a PDA and its most important contents were a contact list and calendar that you synched with your computer through the serial port.

Today, the cell phone, PDA and MP3 player have combined to become your smartphone. You probably use a computer at work and whether you want to admit it to your boss or not, you probably use it for personal web surfing and email. You probably have a notebook computer at home. If you are lucky, you may even have a companion device, like a netbook or iPad which you use on the couch, in the kitchen or coffeeshop.

The kind of content that you consume has also increased. Fifteen years ago, Winamp, the first MP3 player, was not yet developed. Consumer digital cameras were just coming into the market. Netscape had barely started.

Today, you can purchase or download digital music from a variety of sources and you probably have several gigabytes of that. Digital cameras can take high resolution pictures and videos and you probably have more pictures than you can keep track of. You spend more on the Internet than doing anything else and you probably have more bookmarks that you can manage.

When you combine the number of devices that you use today, with the types and amount of content you consume and manage on a daily basis, you realize that Dropbox and Zumodrive have correctly identified a need.

My next article will go into more detail on how Dropbox and Zumodrive go about solving this problem.

Disclaimer: I do not work for either Dropbox or Zumodrive