Dropbox Gets Social – How to Use the New Features – Reade Milner

 

Dropbox finally understands that file sharing isn’t just about making a single file accessible to all the parties involved, but is also about making it a social experience as they collaborate and discuss the files in question. And although basic collaboration tools have always been on the menu for business accounts, the file sharing guru makes the new social capability of Dropbox available across all users.

Yes, users can now comment on shared files and mention each other’s names to notify them of any activity happening, ask questions, or pretty much just post some random musing in the same way that Facebook users can tag their friends on any of their comments. These mentions adopt Twitter’s brilliant way of adding @ signs in front of usernames, which other social media sites have adopted as well. And once any user is mentioned on the comments, they immediately get an email notification that lets them know that they have been invited to join in on the fun.

Of course, Dropbox still respects each user’s privacy, which is why everybody can control whether people can post comments on their files or not. Disabling the feature is as easy as turning it off on the options menu. And if you’re someone who is part of the comments thread and feels that there’s just too much email being sent just because of a single file that people in your group are talking about, you can also opt out of receiving email notifications by unsubscribing from notifications the same way you unfollow a specific thread on other social media sites.

Dropbox and Microsoft Announce Strategic Partnership

With these new features, Dropbox is starting to prep the world for an imminent IPO. This shows what approach they want to adopt to start inching forward into the bigger leagues, and it sure is a smart move trying to go for more user engagement as opposed to just concentrating on monetizing every part of the experience, as what other IPO-ready outfits usually do. Aside from these new social features, Dropbox also strengthens user flexibility through its own collaboration with Microsoft, finally allowing users to make changes to their shared files on the spot. This is one feature that Dropbox users have been clamoring for since it first started, and its addition to the capabilities available for users to enjoy has made it even more worthy of the loyalty that users have shown to it for years.