Dropbox unveiled a beta version of their new collaborative editing web-based software Paper this week, while Apple issued updates to the web version of their iWork suite. The two companies are attempting to gain some leverage on the one incumbent collaborative editing product, Google Docs. It’s kind of impossible to talk about web-based editing software without mentioning Google. The company has had a stronghold on the web-based productivity space for as long as anyone can remember. Since the debut of Google Docs, later rebranded as Drive, in 2007, Google has steadily improved and refined the productivity suite by adding features like collaborative editing, improving the interface, adding formatting tools. The only company to offer a worthy alternative in this time has been Microsoft with the online component to the Office 365 suite. Of course, Google Docs is free to all Gmail users, so they don’t really compete on a meaningful level. But with Dropbox’s Paper, users may be have more choices to make about the way they prefer to collaborate.
The most notable difference between Paper and Docs is the minimalist approach to the interface. In Paper, you start by giving the document a name, then move onto the writing space. There’s only one font with three sizes, and bold and strikethrough options. According to one journalist’s hands-on, YouTube and SoundCloud content can easily be embedded by pasting the URL in the document or clicking a “+” button that sits next to a paragraph. There’s also to-do lists with checkboxes, code snippets are automatically formatted as such, users can be notified that their attention is required in a certain part of the document with an @-mention, and files from within users’ own Dropbox accounts can be easily linked to. The linked files display in previews, including Office and even Google Docs file types. Another journalist described how everything in the interface is draggable, including the order of paragraphs and drag-and-drop photo uploads. Dropbox has also implemented the omnipresent sticker, giving Facebook-inclined users some familiar ways to express themselves. By default, files you save in Paper are shared with your whole team, with the option to save them privately.
With Paper, Dropbox is attempting to differentiate themselves from Google Docs by catering to the needs of startups and small teams, rather than just general users. While Google have been pioneers in the collaboration space, Dropbox is taking it a step further, essentially combining the best features of Slack and Docs, and paring them down to the essential elements. Paper is fighting an uphill battle however, and Dropbox will need to aggressively push it to the right audience, namely middle managers, students, and startup teams, and corporate employees to gain a foothold in the marketplace. Since their purchase of Mailbox last year, the app hasn’t seen any notable progress, while Google wholesale ripped it off with the fairly successful Inbox. Meanwhile Apple not doing much with Sparrow, which sits in the App Store, and still struggles to maintain a marketshare in productivity with iWork. The web suite received an update this week, shedding its beta tag and getting new features, including version history and commenting, finally putting it on the same level as Docs. While Google looks to be keeping their top spot for the forseeable future, Dropbox is gearing up with a serious competitor, perhaps forcing Apple and Microsoft to seriously consider adding a free tier to their software suites down the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment