Redux: New Synchronisation Idea Overlooked By Microsoft

I promised earlier I'd look deeper into microsoft's products around Synchronisation -- here's the first thing I want to make clear:

FolderShare and SkyDrive are completely different

or to put that another way:

DOES NOT EQUAL
FolderShare

SkyDrive

 

But wait a second... are you retracting your earlier claims?

Yes and no. There is a massive fail here -- i'll get to that in a moment.

But first I want to clear up the differences between these two products.

SkyDrive is just online storage, and it has nothing to do with synchronizing those files to any location. There's no client side components (no shell extension, no explorer integration) no developer API -- nothing like that. But on the plus side it's 5 GIG, and it's deeply integrated with the spaces.live.com "on line presence" system.

FolderShare, on the other hand, is all about synchronizing files via the internet. There's no online storage at all. Instead you download and run a small client application (from here) on each of your machines, including Mac OSX. And thus, peer to peer connections can be established (i think they're encrypted and then proxied via microsoft servers) for synchronizing folders.

Each of these are very strong products, and very useful. You can find a lot of people who use and love these services.

Microsoft did a commendable thing when they bought foldershare, and made it free. Thank you!

But the massive fail belongs to...

The massive fail here belongs to the "cut and paste marketing" that's been used to push these two products.

It's a new term I'm coining for Marketing-Communication teams who plagiarise their own work.

Compare and contrast the difference in these two messages:

"Sharing with friends, co-workers, and family is easy..."
Folder Share marketing

"Sharing with friends, co-workers, or family is easy"
Sky Drive marketing...

And compare these two:

"access your personal files from anywhere online"
Sky Drive marketing...

"Access your files from any computer."
Folder Share marketing

The lesson for me is that while re-use is a Good Thing when writing code... it's not so good in the world of product positioning.

'Andrew' on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:16:52 GMT, sez:

Hmm, OK. Thanks for clearing that up.

So Live Mesh is the bastard love-child of Sky Drive and Foldershare? Should it not have been called Sky Share or FolderShareDriveFolder Jr? I think that would have totally cleared up any confusion...

(off to reg those domains now)

'RJ' on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:19:00 GMT, sez:

I would have thought the massive fail is that these two services compliment each other *so* well, that any sane person would not have developed two closely related apps in isolation with neither having the ability to take advantage of both. One of those products (take you pick) is a feature of the other, not a whole new *standalone* product, regardless of whether either or both of them were bought in.

Even Apple (with iDisk) gets this, why does Microsoft have to make everything so damn hard? Do they have nobody managing the product set there?

'Chip Camden' on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:24:58 GMT, sez:

C'mon Leon, don't you know the difference between "and" and "or"? BIG DIFFERENCE. ;)

'lb' on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:31:20 GMT, sez:

@Andrew:
>Mesh is the bastard love-child of...

No -- but there's some truth in that i guess.

My bias: Mesh is really promising -- and I like it best.

Mesh does have all the features of foldershare and skydrive. But it's a ground up rewrite, that will be much more scaleable and extensible.

Mesh is more like "Windows 8." I want to write it about it in the future -- but i've got other stuff to write about and a lot of things to do.

'lb' on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:36:32 GMT, sez:

@Chip: very true.

"Damn you George Boole!!"

(see http://secretgeek.net/george_boole.asp )

'Jenny' on Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:57:46 GMT, sez:

On the subject of file backup, sharing and storage ...

Online backup is becoming common these days. It is estimated that 70-75% of all PC's will be connected to online backup services with in the next decade.

Thousands of online backup companies exist, from one guy operating in his apartment to fortune 500 companies.

Choosing the best online backup company will be very confusing and difficult. One website I find very helpful in making a decision to pick an online backup company is:

http://www.BackupReview.info

This site lists more than 400 online backup companies in its directory and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.

'Doeke Zanstra' on Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:37:28 GMT, sez:

Hmm. I still don't get the difference....

I mean, why do I care on which hard drives the data is stored.... They stopped thinking about what people want.

'Chip Camden' on Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:01:49 GMT, sez:

Yeah, I remember when you posted that one. I've been using it ever since. Maybe he really was an evil genius.

'lenny k' on Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:34:07 GMT, sez:

Why would I want to share files with those dirty cow-orkers anyway?

'lb' on Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:56:42 GMT, sez:

@lenny k
another brisbaner! hello.

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