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Ask HN: Review my startup - CloudFire

15 points by ashmaurya ↗ HN
Last year 50 billion photos were taken. Less than 10% of that were shared online. We think the reason is that sharing photos, and especially video, is just not as easy as it could be. We built CloudFire to solve exactly this problem...

CloudFire lets you share ALL your photos and videos in less that 5 mins. There is no manual uploading, reorganizing, or transcoding...just share it and we do the rest.

http://www.cloudfireit.com

Would appreciate any comments/feedback...

22 comments

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aristus
Slick presentation, but I have to ask a few basic things:

Were the heck do you get the 50Bn number, where do you get the 10% number, and what leads you to believe that the problem is ease of use?

Does this 50Bn number include photos that the owner does not want to share? Photographers take tons of photos they throw away, professionals take photos for work (evidence, training, etc). I generally don't post photos at all.

"no uploading" -- does that mean I have to leave my computer on and connected? Or are you uploading in the background?

Is uploading to Flickr actually that hard? The demo looks like there is a pretty high 'click tax', to the point of choosing an iTunes/iPhoto xml library file, etc, and that's on top of downloading & installing the program and signing up with a credit card.

Nitpick on the home page: "adddress"

ashmaurya
The 50Bn and 10% numbers come from InfoTrends via itfacts (http://www.itfacts.biz/50-bln-digital-photos-taken-in-2007-6...). Yes, it probably includes throwaways but even throwaways are sharable (even if the audience might approach 1).

I always ask people what percentage of photos they share versus the number on their desktop and it's usually way less than 10%.

"no uploading" is really "no manual uploading". You do have to leave your computer (or appliance - coming soon) running and connected and we do auto-cache recent and more popular content.

Yes, the initial download, install, and picking photo/video source is work but it's a one time tax. Any photo or video that is dropped on the desktop is instantly shared and accessible.

redorb
YouTube has video / flickr has photos * then again yahoo had search :) good luck
jtuyen
http://www.cloudfireit.com/help/general.html

not sure if this is a design issue but from "Who did you build CloudFire for?" to "Do people that want to access my media need to download anything?" is indented and bolded. While from "Do people need a login to access my media?" to "I have a ton of stuff, will my broadband connection be enough?" is not indented and displaying regular font size.

rrhyne
I can't be bothered to upload. It's a problem, but personally, I'd be worried about security implications of sharing a folder on my hardrive with a webservice?

I like your presentation. Very clean. on the Features page, I think changing the itunes/iphoto screens to a computer + photos illustration would go futher in saying 'straight from your drive' to the web.

Good luck

ashmaurya
From a technical perspective, the desktop is not directly addressable from the outside. All traffic flows through our p2web gateway and is encypted/authenticated.

From a non-technical perspective, I do agree security will always be a concern and a challenge for us to overcome.

Thanks for the suggestion on the graphic.

bprater
Wow, I'm slow or it took me at least a minute to figure out what the heck your service is doing.

I think you may want to play with your slugline:

"Tired of uploading your photos to Flickr to share pics with your friends and family? With Cloudfire, you'll never ever have to do it again. Here's why: the second a photo arrives in iPhoto, it's instantly streamed to web for anyone to see."

Not tight enough, but I get what it does reading that. (I know you do more than iPhoto, but it may click better for some folks.)

BTW, I'm not sure if I'm being a douche by saying this, but I don't prefer women's voices or Indian voices on screencasts. I prefer the British/American male accent. (My good buddy in Toronto is Indian, so I think I get a little latitude on calling out your accent.)

jrockway
> I don't prefer women's voices or Indian voices on screencasts. I prefer the British/American male accent.

This is probably a problem with you rather than with the screencast. Not everyone is a white male that natively speaks English, so you might want to get used to other accents.

nuggien
> I'm not sure if I'm being a douche by saying this

Geez, really? You're not sure?

sobriquet
I feel that the video is way too long for a "quick tour". After watching bullet points slowly load for the first 30 seconds, I turned it off.

While inquiring HN minds may watch all 4 min, I doubt most users will. I recommend a 30 second teaser which gets the message across, and turn the rest into a how-to video which users can watch if they need help. The UI/UX of the site seems pretty simple, so I don't think people will need a walk through unless they're really dense.

Also the layout on http://www.cloudfireit.com/what_is_cloudfire.html is pretty off balance. Hurts my eyes!

That being said, I like the idea and I'll be signing up for the free trial :)

ashmaurya
Thanks... I agree those bullets are painful and I'll be changing that very shortly here.
eli_s
Batch uploading a folder worth of photos to flickr is easy - 3 clicks 1. hit browse button 2. Multi-select all files 3. Upload.

I don't think you're solving a problem that makes people's lives difficult at the moment. There is a huge resistance to change, so getting people to jump from flickr to cloudfire would require you convince them that a problem exists in the first place.

Maybe this product would appeal to a real power user who is uploading lots of photos/videos on a daily basis, but how many of these are there? How willing would they be to swap to a new service (especially given they have probably invested considerable time to build up their existing profiles)? How many are happy to install software and share data? How many consumers are happy to sign up for an ongoing fee?

Maybe your niche within a niche is big enough to build a business - I hope so because despite all the hurdles you have in front of you it looks like you have a nice looking product.

All the best.

ashmaurya
We are currently searching for the right niche but one that seems to have some legs is the digital home market - partnering with ISPs to up sell higher bandwidth plans, and networked hard drive and appliance manufactures for value add service. We've also had some pretty good uptake with busy parents that want to share tons of photos (and videos) without a lot of work.

Thanks for the comments.

paul9290
So this is DropBox for photos? I think that is how I understood it.
ashmaurya
Yes - sort of... Incidentally, we also have another product called BoxCloud which is a bit like DropBox for files and folders.
whalesalad
Heh. In terms of the marketing material and the data on the website, it reminds me an awful lot of the startup that I work for... iLovePhotos (http://ilovephotos.com). Very similar indeed.
shafqat
If you're going to say something or accuse someone, just say it!
joshsharp
Feedback on the site itself: pages like http://www.cloudfireit.com/pricing.html have the details -only- in the image (and no alt text). This is hardly the most accessible way to deliver the information, as screen readers won't pick up any of it. Consider using more semantic markup (headers and divs) and replacing their text with CSS image replacement techniques. The visually impaired (that includes Google!) will thank you.
ashmaurya
Thanks... we slapped the site pretty quickly but are revisiting from an SEO perspective.
okeumeni
I don’t know much about file sharing business, I don’t use any public system myself; we do own an infrastructure for that. But I have to say looking at your application it look great, I can tell you guys spend a lot of time on it and that you know what you are doing.

This is my two cent advice to you guys: don’t get discourage by negative feedback from HN, read between lines. Take all comment with a positive spirit, critique should be a base for your work ahead. You must find ways to convince more people of the usage of your tool. Focus on converting more people into your cause; sell your product. HN is a tough crowd, but a crowd with experience and good judgment. Take all comments as a call to go back to your drawing board and do more magic.

Good luck guys and keep it up.

catone
This is a really minor thing, but a pet peeve of mine is when vowels from two separate words line up in a domain. It confuses me at first glance, and sometimes the name gets obscured. So I see, CloudFireit (i.e., something I would pronounce "firite") instead of CloudFireIt.

You might want to consider switching to something like getcloudfire.com or gocloudfire.com ... both are available.