Availability on Multiple Devices & Platforms

The nature of the Dropbox product makes it important for them to be on multiple platforms. People need to access their products from anywhere at any time. Being available everywhere is key for Dropbox, according to Co-Founder & CEO Drew Houston.

There are an estimated 20 million Ubuntu (Linux) users worldwide. Dropbox released their Linux program as soon as they launched to the public. These millions of Linux users did not have a free cloud storage solution at the time. By adding Linux support and continuing to this day to be on as many platforms as possible, Dropbox is making it easy for anyone who wants a Dropbox account to have one.

There are an estimated 2.0% of Dropbox users who use Linux exclusively. Going by the 50 million user base number, there are a million Linux Dropbox users. These are a million people who can spread the product by sharing galleries, referring friends, adding them on social media, and all the other growth hacks Dropbox has done.

Beyond Linux, Dropbox has maintained Blackberry support despite their shrinking market share. It’s also supported on even the least popular devices such as the Symbian.

Support on multiple platforms is not just important for the Dropbox product; it can also be considered an opportunity for growth. One Symbian user can spread the Dropbox product to one Mac user who may spread it to 100 people.

Takeaway:

Dropbox understands their users and the needs they have. They also have a leg up on many of their competitors who don’t support every platform. What are you doing as a business owner to achieve a distinguishable competitive advantage?

CEO Houston has big plans for Dropbox. They’ve gotten to where they are not by advertising, but by going to where their users are (Digg in the early days), keeping things simple, and implementing a few growth hacks. Startups are hard, but implementing a few of these growth hacks into your own company may make things a little easier on you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Easy Signup Process

Image
The signup process is only a few steps and a user can sign up on their desktop—no web browser needed. Once a user signs up (either via web or desktop program) and installs Dropbox on their computer, Dropbox puts a photos folder and a ‘Getting Started’ text file to help get them started. This helps the new Dropbox user get a little acclimated to the product and some of its functions.
Read more

Dropquest

Dropquest is a contest run by Dropbox that makes users go through different puzzles and scavenger hunts. Those who complete and place in the top 176 get free space and/or free swag. The announcement on their blog generated quite a lot of Likes and Tweets. Dropquest has gotten Dropbox lost of publicity in the tech world for this (just Google dropquest). Takeaway: Contests can be a great way for companies to generate buzz about their brand and get users enthused about the product. If you haven’t already, you may want to try holding a fun contest with your users where they get more of your product in return. You just may end up generating some PR for your product.
Read more

Social Media

Image
We’ve all seen the stores with a “Like us on Facebook” or the “Follow us on Twitter” decals on front doors. It’s becoming all too common-something that people mindlessly see. Some companies offer an incentive to Like them, such as announcing specials for Facebook fans only. Dropbox did something a little different. With each Follow on Twitter, Connect with Facebook or Twitter, Dropbox gives the user a 125MB increase: At the time of this writing, Dropbox had a little over 720,000 Twitter followers. While not all of them can be attributed to this hack, it certainly hasn’t hurt their quest to increase followers. Dropbox incentivizes users to connect with them on Facebook and Twitter – giving the user yet another platform to spread the Dropbox product
Read more