Filesharing: The Internet Needs You

[Macca]

Net Jammers,

It hit me 2 weeks ago: I hate Filesharing websites.

The constant bombardment of advertising, ever lingering prompts to create a "Premium" account, tight restrictions, crappy speeds and most importantly: the ultimate pain-in-the-ass that is "Please wait 30 seconds to download this file". Seriously, whoever first came up with that is a terrible person. No kudos for you at all.

Why can't we just have an enjoyable experience? I mean, after all, we are the consumers - right? Shouldn't we be dictating the kind of service that we get? Without us, these websites are nothing, and yet people continue to give support sellout websites like Mediafire, Zippyshare, RapidShare, 4Shared, FileServe, FilesTube and others (please name and shame below if I left a major offender out). It seems like madness that we as an online community continue to do this, but it's for one very obvious reason: there's just not a better alternative. Indeed, the internet is desperately in need of a not-for-profit file host.

That's where I want to come in. I'm no savior, but I know what I want and how to do it. In very recent times I've been working on a design concept for a no-fuss file uploader. It still lacks formation and that polished look you've all probably come to expect, but I love the idea of a minimalistic web application that does exactly what it says it does. People upload the file(s) - get the link - done. Sure, it's just an idea on the drawing board, but what do you think of what I have so far?

[Ruthless_One]

Great concept man! I love the idea. And yes, you are right, we are in desperate need of a good file-sharing host that does what it says, no string attached. Great Job!

[saladFingrs]

nice design.

As a self-employed filmmaker I use dropbox to share final files with clients and when collaborating with people on shared work spaces.

I'm always hungry for more free space, because I can't afford their fees to upgrade. At the moment I've got 3.5gig of space for free and am using 60% of that right now.

I probably don't need more, but would love more. $100 per year isn't much for 100gig per year, but I can't afford it.

I have 20gig free cloud storage with my adobe creative cloud account - which I'm not utilising properly yet as I'm kind of trying to reserve is for project file archive and backup, rather than file client sharing.

Thinking about getting one of those hard drives you plug into your modem to do a big photo back up at the moment.

[Macca]

I've never been able to warm to Dropbox. Granted, their software is very well developed and useful, but I guess I knew it was trouble from the outset. The concept wasn't exactly new when it first came out, but it became so successful because at first it was free and the space/bandwidth allocations were very generous.

Dropbox started out with its users in mind, but it's far more profit focused now. 2011 saw them scale their plans down for free users, and again in 2012. I also hate the idea of forcing users to create accounts just to upload files. Super annoying.

I've done some calculations and worked out that I can break even on any scale offering (for free users):

- 250GB of Storage Space
- Unlimited downloads
- No download waits
- A high speed cloud network for content delivery

[Macca]

Or better yet, how about upload space being determined as a certain percentage of outgoing bandwidth for that user? The more bandwidth used, the more space they get because they've made the storage costs back for me. Hmmm...

[OUTLAW]

The design looks simple and friendly. I likes. POWER to the PEOPLE/consumers!!

[Macca]

So I did some more research today. I worked out that 1GB of storage costs me approximately 13 cents. Ad views on the download page average between $0.4c and $1.20 per view depending on the campaign. Starting to think breaking even will be very easy, as will earning extra storage space.

[Gryphus_1]

This all sounds very promising Macca. I'm a Dropbox user myself, but this has some very exciting potential. Look forward to seeing it grow.

It's awesome that you'll be profitable so quickly. That's a pretty rare thing.

G1

[Ruthless_One]

I love the new MEGA page. So far you get 50GB no strings attached. Easy to use, easy to configure. Check them out. https://mega.co.nz/#

[Gryphus_1]

Ruth, is that what MegaUpload turned into? It looks crazy good. I hope it lasts, so many of those type of things go under with no warning.

Keep us updated Macca. It sounds awesome, look forward to seeing it.

G1

[Macca]

New Mega brand looks interesting, Ruthless. Surprising that they place so much emphasis on security. Nice find though, I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

I will keep everyone updated on my progress on AnyHub. Currently, I'm developing user accounts and their profiles. There will be an unexpected social aspect to my website.

Stay tuned.