On Droplr and the App Ecosystem Growing Up

Venture-backed web and mobile startups have gotten the world used to free. It’s simply taken for granted that online publications are free, along with mobile games and file sharing services and practically anything else that doesn’t come on a disk. It’s a wonder that the App Store generated $1 billion in December — as much as apps filled conversations with family and friends, geeky and non-geeky alike, the only paid apps I ever heard referenced were Microsoft Office’s apps, and even then they were only mentioned in relation to the fact that most people don’t need anything new in the new versions of the suite. Free is the name of the game.

So, of course, are shutdowns, acquisitions, pivots, and the other side-effects when free doesn’t pay the bills.

Everyone hates it when their favorite free service gets shut down — remember Google Reader? — but companies can get an incredible amount of hate for charging for their products.

Droplr’s gone through a bit of a transition this year, growing up from a basic simple file sharing system to one that includes an image annotation system, has a new robust API that lets shared files get edited and re-saved on the server (see the new Markdrop app), and has team plans for businesses (one I accidentally announced before it’d been released to the public). And now, this week, it closed down its original free accounts that let you share up to 1Gb of files for free with a small ad on the file preview page. Instead, Droplr now has a Lite plan that costs $4.99/month for unlimited sharing of files up to 2Gb in size, along with a Pro plan for $9.99/month that includes customization and more.

Predictably, the announcement was met with angry comments on Twitter and Facebook, some even suggesting that Droplr had no business sense by dropping free accounts — when charging for your product should be business 101. Others, comically, suggested they add a free ad-supported tier — and seeing as that’s exactly what they just shut down, it’d make you think those complaining weren’t real users anyhow.

Building a business — paid or ad supported — is tough. I should know: I shut down my own paid magazine last year, and my employer just shut down the AppStorm network since ads alone never brought us into the black. In a world where everything is ad supported, the value of each ad is rapidly approaching zero. It’s time to start paying for stuff again.

If you need to quickly share files often, I couldn’t recommend a better service than Droplr. I’ve used it with a Pro account since last July, and couldn’t be happier. It’s a quality service worth paying for. And I happen to be excited about the new things they’re doing in the space, and wouldn’t mind more simple apps like MarkDrop that leverage Droplr like a new iCloud.

Perhaps it’s not for you — everyone doesn’t need to share files often. But it’s absolutely not a stupid idea for Droplr or any business to charge real money for their products. In fact, charging is what I’d call good business sense, the type that’ll build companies we can actually rely on for years to come instead of having to jump to the new hotness in apps ever couple months. If this is what the app market maturing looks like, I can easily get behind that.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.