Instagram Designer Tim Van Damme Is Leaving Facebook For Dropbox

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/16/instagram-designer-tim-van-damme-is-leaving-facebook-for-dropbox/

by devonleigh • 13 years ago

56 44 13 years ago

rsync• 13 years ago

The billion dollar instagram acquisition is becoming the insane-valuation-punchline du jour and will eventually supersede all previous punchlines from the first bubble.

tptacek• 13 years ago

Has Instagram's usage plummeted or does it remain one of the most popular photo-sharing social networks in the world? Does photo-sharing remain one of the most popular activities on Facebook? Is it become less apparent, instead of more apparent, that a Facebook competitor could have leveraged Instagram as a threat?

pdog• 13 years ago

I know you're asking these questions rhetorically, but for those who don't know, Instagram usage exploded after the acquisition and the consensus in the Valley is that it sold to Facebook for incredibly cheap.

threeseed3• 13 years ago

You couldn't be more wrong IMHO.

Instagram is actually looking to be quite a smart acquisition. Not only is it fending off Vine with its video integration but look what is happening in Kuwait. Businesses there are using to sell comics, sheep, makeup - anything which is photo dominated. Plenty of opportunities there to monetise without affecting your everyday user.

And as smartphone cameras become more sophisticated like we are seeing from Nokia and Sony it is likely that Instagram will takeover from Flickr as the primary photo service of the internet as well.

johnrob• 13 years ago

The instagram number was just a numerator on top of facebook's valuation. To say instagram was overpriced is just an indirect way of saying facebook was overpriced.

smackfu• 13 years ago

Compared to OMGPOP, which was a one hit wonder bought for $200 million and shut down after a year?

freyr2• 13 years ago

Of course that's a worse acquisition, but it doesn't have the flashy $1B price tag, and did anybody really expect better from Zinga?

Instagram had strategic timing for its IPO, and nipped a potential competitor in the bud. Facebook probably was worried (and rightfully, IMO) that it has lost its cool factor among young people, and that there was a vacuum of influence in the mobile space. Instagram was spreading insanely fast among young people, was natively mobile, and was centered around Facebook's most popular functionality (sharing photos with friends). Had Instagram incorporated more of the essential social networking features, it conceivably could have become the social networking site to dethrone Facebook. Squashing that threat when they did was very, very smart.

rdl4• 13 years ago

No way. Broadcast.com for $4.5b? AOL/Netscape (which actually destroyed the company, in addition to being a lot of money?) Pets.com (due to the puppet). Etc. nothing going on today could hold a candle to the 1998-2001 bubble.

prostoalex3• 13 years ago

Don't forget HP buying Compaq. $25 billion well spent.

far33d• 13 years ago

Dropbox is quickly unseating Facebook, who unseated Google before it, as the premier bigco employer.

These kinds of talent shifts tend to accelerate as the company becomes more successful. Remember when google was giving $1m offers to keep engineers from going to Facebook pre-IPO?

Anecdotally, it looks like this is true for top college grads as well.

rdl4• 13 years ago

Yeah -- I think a lot if it is "based in SF" and "hasn't IPO'd yet, but is big enough that IPO or destruction is the only likely outcome."

textminer• 13 years ago

Why is that not Twitter?

magicalist• 13 years ago

So much of this impression is shaped by the narrative that the techblogs are choosing to cover on any particular week. In reality, all these companies have some level of attrition, and people leave one job for another for new challenges. Dropbox has 315 employees[1]. That constraint alone means that the number of slots to fill will be very small.

(I also personally wouldn't really label Dropbox as "bigco" label like Google and Facebook, if only because you can still fit everyone in one medium-large room. I guess it's not a startup anymore, but I don't think anyone would consider it a lumbering corporate behemoth).

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/about

threeseed3• 13 years ago

Of all the internet companies Dropbox looks the most precarious to me.

The fact is that the core product kind of sucks. It is slow to upload, very CPU intensive and incredibly slow to receive new features. And its focus on API data syncing as a growth area seems fraught with danger given iCloud and likely similar services from Microsoft, Ubuntu, Google etc.

It also has no stickiness associated to it. I could easily transition to a competitor's product with no loss of data or productivity. And if it wasn't the best of a pretty sad bunch then I would have years ago.

lmartel• 13 years ago

I disagree that their core product sucks. The negatives you mentioned aren't noticeable to 99% of end users; what is noticeable is that dropbox works exactly the way a product like dropbox should work. I'd agree that Dropbox looks precarious but I'd argue it's for the opposite reason: they got the product right the first time and they don't seem like they have anywhere to go from here.

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

Dropbox is an amazing product. What are you even talking about? The points you brought up are completely irrelevant to the cloud storage market. New features? Areas for growth? Who the fuck cares?

freyr2• 13 years ago

I don't see it growing as big as Google or Facebook either, not because the product sucks (when I used it last, it worked well), but simply because I don't think many people have a real need for it.

My parents use Google, they reluctantly signed up for Facebook (and got bored and stopped using it), but they'll never have a need for Dropbox. Nor will any of their friends, or most of my friends.

With the trend towards appliance computers and walled gardens, users interact with their file systems less than ever. Their tagline is "Never email yourself a file again!" I can't remember the last time I emailed myself a file. It might as well be "Never transfer a file between computers using a floppy disk again!"

When I was a student, and I had a desktop, a laptop, and lab computer, Dropbox came in handy on occasion. Now, I have a laptop and tablet. What would I sync between my them? Photos? Music? Notes? Cloud sharing is built in, and it's less of a hassle than going through Dropbox.

I'm sure there are people for whom it is essential. But those people are probably in the minority, and their numbers are likely to dwindle.

rdl4• 13 years ago

Dropbox seems to have two major value propositions: ease of use, and multiplatform. If you just use it on desktops, there are already several far superior options. "Ease of use" isn't sticky.

The big challenge is mobile. Dropbox's main stickiness is when developers adopt the Dropbox API, particularly on mobile. If you just use Apple for mobile, iCloud is in some ways superior (although has Dropbox's same horrible security). There's no one doing a better job than Dropbox of crossplatform on lame devices like iOS and Android in addition to desktops (and game systems, etc.).

(I admit I'm pretty biased against Dropbox because they both lied blatantly and horribly about security for a long time, and then, when caught, did a minimal job of just handwaving and continuing as before. They make file security markedly worse for users than it was before Dropbox.)

I don't think "dropbox for teams" is much stickiness; I don't know of anyone using it in serious deployments, and in a serious deployment, switching wouldn't be that hard, either.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

I think it won't matter, because Dropbox could very well be the Kleenex of handkerchiefs or the Hoover of vacuum cleaners; people just associate Dropbox with that kind of task, and I don't know if they need to provide great quality as a result.

johnchristopher• 13 years ago

As a user I am under the impression - and I do insist that it is a subjective, unsubstantiated point of view - that the moment those companies went on their first talent shopping spree they stopped innovating in significant ways. Am I the only one to feel that way ?

thehme• 13 years ago

I can't help thinking that these sort of articles remind me of the "entertainment" industry's gossip headlines. I would much rather read about the acquisitions and business decisions being made by the tech giants, then the gossip about the career decisions of the "celebrities" in the tech world

dakrisht• 13 years ago

Couldn't agree more. Typical TechCrunch. Nonsense. Should we throw this guy a party or something?

People leave companies to go to other companies. Happens all the time, every day.

ndnichols• 13 years ago

That's funny, I was just thinking, "I would love to be well-known enough one day that my switching employers would make the front page of HN."

I hear you, though. To me, it matters a lot what I think about the "celebrity." Christopher Hitchen's becoming an American citizen, for example, felt like news to me because he's a thoughtful, worldly person who presumably considered his decision. If Russell Brand became a citizen, though, I wouldn't care and would just presume it was for tax reasons, or a joke, or whatever.

Considering that I haven't heard of Tim Van Damme before, I'm inclined to agree with you and consider this gossip.

rplacd• 13 years ago

Apropos of not too much that's healthy for discourse, but I'm inclined to give Russell Brand a token amount of redemption: he is, at the very least, articulate to a very finely sharpened "t" - that's the impression I've gotten from his writing in the Grauniad [1]; and while I'm not wading into the debate on whether he's simply just looking deeper into the usual tropes it indicates a broader awareness than a vox no-so-pop.

[1] Here's his version of the bog-standard "Thatcher's dead: this is what I remember of her years" sketch - he raises it from the dead by tossing the tread-lightlies around The Classes and makes it about what Thatcherite individualism meant for him as a prime target. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand...

beggi• 13 years ago

David Cramer has also left DISQUS for Dropbox. (http://justcramer.com/2013/07/16/dropbox/)

johns• 13 years ago

He was actually at tenexer in between the two.

zeeg2• 13 years ago

tenXer

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rhizome• 13 years ago

which is likely more of a true promotion than a lateral, all things considered.

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zeeg2• 13 years ago

To be fair, Instagram was one of the only other companies that interested me.

Main upside of Dropbox was the role I get to play + its in SF and my commute didn't really change (<20m)

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guard-of-terra• 13 years ago

Should be awarded with Medal of Brownian movement.

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mathattack• 13 years ago

If viewed on a "Purchase price/employees" ratio, this is an expensive move. The PR of a hire like this is also VERY valuable.

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Instagram Designer Tim Van Damme Is Leaving Facebook For Dropbox

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