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Innovation

Dropbox hits half a billion users

Cloud-based file storing service Dropbox has reached 500 million users worldwide since it launched into the file sharing market back in 2008.
Written by Asha Barbaschow, Contributor

File hosting service Dropbox has reached 500 million global users in its first eight years of operation.

Although based in San Francisco, Dropbox said its most recent 100 million users came from all over the world.

With 75 percent of Dropbox users outside of the US, Charlie Wood, managing director of Dropbox ANZ, told ZDNet in December that of the company's then 400 million subscribers, approximately 8 million were from Australia.

"For the population size, that's an incredible footprint of users," he said. "So it made absolute sense to get close to our customers."

Dropbox said its service is used by a total of 8 million businesses, with 150,000 being paying businesses. It said approximately 25,000 businesses are added each quarter.

"The businesses on Dropbox, too, are making it a truly global community," the company said. "Swedish distiller The Absolut Company and Japanese advertising/PR agency Dentsu are just two of the companies using Dropbox to bridge gaps with colleagues around the world."

According to the company, 3.3 billion connections have been made on its platform by people sharing content, a 51 percent jump in the past year.

"As new people join, they're bringing friends, family, and co-workers along," the company said. "44 percent of new accounts were opened when existing users introduced people to Dropbox -- that's making for an even more creative and collaborative community."

Social media giant Twitter claims to have 320 million monthly active users as of December last year, with 79 percent of account holders from outside of the US; while Facebook said it has 1.59 billion monthly active users and 1.04 billion daily active users also as of December.

Online scrapbooking platform Pinterest announced in September it had surpassed the 100 million monthly user mark, with 45 percent of users outside of the US.

Based on figures from last year, Pinterest remains well behind Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram, which claims about 300 million users.

In December, Dropbox partnered with Vodafone to offer Australian small businesses a data and storage package aimed at providing businesses a platform for working on the go.

At the time, both companies said the partnership would see the duo make a play for Australia's estimated AU$774 million cloud applications market.

"At Dropbox our mission is to simplify the way people work together," Wood said previously. "Our partnership with Vodafone will improve this further by allowing the thousands of businesses that are on the Vodafone network to share and collaborate on files more quickly and easily whether they are in the office, working remotely, or on the go.

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