“We know this is a big deal. This decision was made with great care. We have worked hard on our product and feel that our vision aligns perfectly with Dropbox’s vision for Carousel. Dropbox has invested the past seven years focusing on building a secure home for your files. And now with Carousel comes a home for your photos and videos as well”
Loom co-founder Jan Senderek commenting on Loom’s website of the acquisition of Loom by Dropbox
Dropbox has purchase the Apple iOS app Loom, the popular Storage locker for photographs for an unknown number of Gold Coins on Thursday April 17th 2014. Seriously though folks, not really Gold Coins, but given the secretive nature of the undisclosed deal, it appears that it might have well have been as such.
Already, Dropbox has spent a lot of money out of their US$1.3 Billion VC (Venture Capital) Warchest obtained from the following whos-who in the VC World/Angel Investor World in their run up to declaring their IPO (Initial Public Offering):
- Founder of DC Shoes Damon Way
- Google Ventures
- Great Oaks VC
- Overbrook Entertainment (Will Smith, yes, the actor from Hollywood!)
- Tencent
All Loom customers are being migrated over to Carousel, Dropbox’s equivalent service that store pictures in the Cloud as they are taken by smartphones with Cameras. Loom’s app has been shuttered, accepting no more new customers. In the meantime, Loom’s eight (8) man team working collaboratively virtually over the Internet between San Francisco and Germany will now be integrated into Dropbox’s Carousel Team, the equivalent replacement service for Loom. Unlike Loom, Carousel will also include Android smartphones…. good luck getting Android users to pay for anything!
Customers toting the Loom app on their Apple iPhones will be greeted by a notice advising them of the purchase of Loom by Dropbox and that they have the choice to migrate their photos to Dropbox’s Carousel, for which there is an automated process being developed.
Dropbox’s Carousel does a better job of synching and storing pictures in the Cloud. Loom used thumbnail previews with the images being downloadable from their Cloud Storage. Carousel, on the other hand, does the exact same thing. The difference is that they have faster Broadband Connections, making it possible to just log into Carousel to view you to load and view images over the Internet in real-time by tapping on them in your Cloud-synched folder.
Loom co-founder Jan Senderek explains it best, quote: “After spending some serious time investigating if this was the right move for us, we realized that Dropbox has solved many problems around scaling Infrastructure”
Apple iPhone users will love this, as now instead of storing teenie-tiny thumbnails on your smartphone, you now can just literally stream the pictures in full and glorious living colour as originally captured for your viewing pleasure on your smartphone or on any other device that you log in to access Carousel.
Migration from Loom to Carousel – Dropbox’s Carousel is an Apple iPhone Photographer’s Dream
Good to note here as a sweetener, those who paid for their Loom accounts will be give the equivalent Storage Space they already paid for with Loom free for yet another year. Many will take up this offer, which Dropbox will automate so as to make the transition as pain-free as possible, especially as many of the users of Loom paid for their accounts.
Their services were priced similar to Dropbox Carousel:
- 5GB free
- US$49.99 for 50GB
- US$99.99 for 100GB
Loom was a godsend to those who paid for its pricey offerings to expand their Storage Space on their Apple iPhones. Loom made it possible to take hundred of pictures and not have to worry about running out of Space on your Apple iPhone, as it automatically backed them up for you on the Cloud and made them viewable again as if you have a massive Hard-Drive on your Apple iPhone.
Dropbox is really just a Cloud File Locker and wasn’t optimized to automatically back up pictures, albeit it’s great for collaborative work and just file Storage in general as noted in Google Drive, the Dropbox clone, now ups the ante to 15GB of Free Storage during Google I/O.
But with Carousel, Dropbox neatly solves that problem as they move into this new area of specialized Cloud Storage Lockers. Instead of treating all files as just files for Storage, they now offer VAS (Value Added Services) that make it convenient for the customer to use their services to do what they want without having to install third party applications that utilize Dropbox’s Cloud Storage capabilities to offer such services as Music Streaming, Photo Storing and Sharing and Microsoft Document Support.
With a possible expansion to Google Android users they’ll possibly increase their user base exponentially, even though they may not make much money from it. This given that most Google Android smartphone users don’t spend money on Storage Apps as they mostly have SD Card Slots and micro-USB Port to back up and transfer their images to external Storage.
Still, there may be many among the Google Android crowd that may like the idea of Cloud Storage for their photographs that they can access anywhere anytime on any device, even with the capability of sharing on Social Media in real time.
Hopefully the Loom users feel welcomed and haven’t lost any images in the transition across from Loom to Carousel even as Dropbox marches on towards the Cloud Storage Iron Throne!