I discovered this neat site,
YouSendIt, a little while back from a friend who likes to use it to send me large files but I never got around to blogging about it.
YouSendIt allows you to share large files up to a maximize size of 1 gb and can be accessed for a week for a limited number of downloads. They also offer SSL encrypted transfer for secure document sharing and best of all, the entire service is free. However, I see two big problems with their service.
1) Their business model is practically non-existent. Except for a few ads on the download page, I do not see any other sources of revenue. Further, they don't allow for account creation meaning they do not even have a tangible user base. The service is truly free! According to the site, they transfer over 33 terrabytes a day and to believe that they can pay the bills through advertising seems quite unlikely. Like
Ourmedia, it would seem such a service would be impossible without private funding. The possible benefits for the company compared to the costs seem negligible.
2) Their solution needs to get with the times! The main argument for using their service is that you can securely share large file sizes that normally would not fit in a mailbox. Had this been few years ago this might have been true but given that the heavyweight contenders for email such as Google, Yahoo and Hotmail are now offering 1 and 2 gigabyte limits,
YouSendIt doesn't really seem to be bringing much to the table anymore. Further,
YouSendIt has the same problems as email in that files are uploaded through a web interface (unless you are using a mail client). The connection can be lost at anytime and nowadays, nobody will upload hundreds of megabytes without some sort of resume feature. What about secure sharing? Well sure your data might not be sniffed while uploading to
YouSendIt but considering the url link to access the file is sent to emails in plaintext and can be easily forwarded, their claim for secure sharing seems flawed.
So the million dollar question to my friend is why are you still using
YouSendIt? Email seems to be just as reliable ;)
Oh yeah, thanks for everything you have sent :D
Tags: OurMedia YouSendIt Email