[minimaxir]

"[...] over 175 million people using Dropbox and more than a billion files synced each day"

Assuming that the "1 billion" refers to number of sync events, that statistic implies that on average, Dropbox users only make changes to ~6 files in their Dropbox per day.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Dropbox must have a massive Power Law at work.

EDIT: I might be wrong with my interpretation of "files synced": it could mean distinct numbers of files that receive a sync event atleast once per day or files added per day to a Dropbox which are then synced. In both cases, I believe the ~6/day statistic and I apologize.

[archon]

> that statistic implies that on average, Dropbox users only make changes to ~6 files in their Dropbox per day.

I believe it. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I usually only write to a few files from Dropbox in any given day. I read those files often, but I rarely write unless I'm doing something like uploading pictures from my camera.

[timdorr]

Makes sense to me. Not every user uses Dropbox every single day. Also, the 175m number is not qualified as people who have used the app in a certain amount of time, so that could include inactive accounts.

[latortuga]

If you consider a "file sync" event as a single file being pulled to a single device, it could be 1 file to 6 devices per day which seems a lot more realistic to me. Especially when you consider teams that are probably syncing files across tens of devices multiple times per day.

[smackfu]

Does 6 seem high or low to you?

[minimaxir]

If a user is using Dropbox as backup/sync as opposed to free long-term storage, 6 seems unbelieveably low.

I store my IM logs in my Dropbox. Every time a message is sent, 2 files are changed (the message log and the overall database). One conversation alone can fire 100 sync events.

And if you're like me and are a Ctrl+S addict when working on important papers or code, each Ctrl+S is a sync event.

[arrrg]

I think you are definitely the outlier here. Most people I have seen using Dropbox store some documents there, not even all of them. Just those they want to have synced.

That’s also more or less the default for Dropbox, that’s how it’s set up and guides its users. It’s just some folder in your user folder, not even the documents folder. By default you have to actively think to put stuff in there.

I think you might just have a wrong picture of who uses Dropbox. Storing IM conversations or even all of your documents on there is quite esoteric.

Also, if you think of a typical home computer of someone who has a job then there aren’t going to be many files on that thing. A few letters to cancel something or other (but even that is done mostly by email these days), photos, videos and maybe some music (but many people don’t put that in their Dropbox because there is just no space) … that’s not much. You don’t need to create files to go to Facebook or read the news or get weather info or watch the stocks (minus Facebook that’s exactly the stuff my dad does on the family laptop and I installed Dropbox on both PCs in their house to keep their rarely changed documents folder in sync).

Yeah, students probably have more documents but I have even seen those only use Dropbox for collaborative stuff – not all the rest they do.

It’s not that those people don’t get value from Dropbox or don’t use it, they just don’t need it that often.

[minimaxir]

Fair enough. I admit I'm paranoid about my file integrity. :P

Although if the behavior that you describe is the typical user behavior, then that's not a good thing for Dropbox's attempts to convert free users to paying users.

[smackfu]

Yeah, but OTOH, a lot of people will use it just like a documents folder. So maybe there is a single Word or Excel doc that is updated at a time, once or twice a week. That's the other end of the curve.