Competitive/SWOT Analysis
- Google Drive -
Strengths
Google Drive is accessible from any device that can connect to the internet. The price of their storage plans is very reasonable. They integrate with their largely adopted email service. Built-in features like spreadsheets, documents, and slideshows.
Weaknesses
Low customizability/personalization of the product. Only 2 options for viewing all of your files. Needs internet to work. Not intuitive. No discoverable aspect like with social media.
Opportunities
A similar application could have more customizable organize options. Being able to add and sort links visually would be a unique feature. Adding tagging would be a big feature also. Creating a more visual workspace for an organization could be the key.
Threats
Google has massive recognition.
They have a great infrastructure that
is highly secured.
Google Drive Observations
Positioning
Everyone knows Google Drive, it’s the staple for business and student use.
They have very good free versions of programs built-in. You can email a huge folder of information easily.
Differentiators
The audience is wide here. Everyone for practical reasons has used Google Drive. It’s great for students, businesses, friends, it’s ease, collaborative power, and availability make it the right choice for most practical solutions.
Opportunities
They are great but not if you are trying to make a collection of resources with links and descriptors. They can’t do mood boards, they aren’t creating curated spaces that make for social sharing in the way Pinterest does. You can’t set your files to the public, that a wandering audience can come across. It’s very private. They aren’t trying to grow their user base that way, they were already well placed in the lexicon of technology.
- Pinterest -
Strengths
Easily create mood boards, great for projects and inspiration. Variable heights of the pins are nice for scrolling. Board icons are previews of the content inside them. Discoverable through social media.
Weaknesses
Not easy to see if something is a link. They only deal with images. No one uses Pinterest for file organization. The web application needs work versus the mobile which it looks like it was designed for.
Opportunities
To create the visual appeal of sorting like in Pinterest but widen it to a variety of file types would be a useful product. The visual aspects cater to people who have more visual minds and memories. Organize files and links by themes to have useful groupings of information for artists and students alike.
Threats
Visually Pinterest is very strong, they are known for the board styles. They have a widely known name.
Pinterest Observations
Positioning
People know Pinterest but it feels like it isn’t quite a heavy hitter or widely adopted. From my own experience, it’s a finicky marketing tool and isn’t something a lot of people use as a boredom killer, which is kinda how it’s positioned when considering the whole of the user base. It feels more specialty and not professional.
Differentiators
Because Pinterest is a collection of very visual elements it has cornered itself as a mood board tool. People making visual projects and looking for ideas aren’t a wide section of people.
Opportunities
Taking Pinterest and having a more casual mobile version with a more professional desktop version for getting the project done in an efficient manner would be extremely useful. Taking the professional aspect of Google Drive and giving more visual professionals a way to mentally organize their files better would be something a lot of people could take to. People like visual interfaces. How could something like Pinterest be adapted to people creating business projects? Or used as a study & resource collection tool? Used as file storage for artists, DJs, writers, and a slew of other uses, opening it up to a much wider audience.
- Dropmark -
Strengths
Dropmark has many useful features for file sorting and saving. It's very collaborative, different permissions can be set and people can comment and work on files together. It integrates with slack. It has handy APIs. You can get browser extensions to help you save files online. The website is very mobile and desktop friendly. Many advanced features are for paying customers, but if they share a file with the non-paying client they can still use those features. File previews can be customized. tags are included in different board styles. Worth upgrading for the extra features and only $5 a month.
Weaknesses
The free plans are 500MB and the paid are 50GB, which is only $5 a month. In Google Drive, you can get 2TB for $10 a month. So if you are looking for large amounts of storage then this one is a little pricey. Feels like they really push the pro on you, feels like a hard upsell and a constant reminder to just upgrade. It makes sense from a business standpoint since it’s advertising free but also feels a little hard to lean on it as a free user and transition to paid. Easier to justify putting money into something you already use
Opportunities
More server space, a way to just link your computer and have all your files back up and get the file previews and customizability. They have a useful visual file sorter but you can’t go bulk right upfront. It’s not well known. No discoverable aspect like with social media, but the RSS feed could be linked in with social media. Not something a student could pick up easily for a class assignment, with a touch more free uses and customizability it could be more widely adopted in schools. Is there a different way to monetize this? Is the large gap in features something turning people away or by providing too much would they get fewer subscribers overall?
Threats
They have a very developed product
that is useful for business aspects.
Advertisement free.
Dropmark Observations
Positioning
This is a business internal collaborative web application. It’s good for organizing yourself or for working on a group project. This is not a social platform in any way. It could be used as a collection of educational resources but they don’t seem to strongly promote that.
Differentiators
Designers and professional groups.
Opportunities
For what it is, it’s great, and to push it further would take a large infrastructure of servers and a way for users to take it farther with their own coding. Transferring files from other resources directly would be nice but there might be permissions issues with that. I like it as a file management system and right now they are positioned more as a collaborative mood board.