Cloud storage service Dropbox is hoping to modify its company description slightly with its latest product. It’s called Dropbox Paper, and it’s effectively the company’s Google Docs competitor.
While, yes, it is yet another online office collaboration tool, the company’s Todd Jackson claims that it’s so much more than that.
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“More than a doc, Dropbox Paper is a flexible workspace that brings people and ideas together,” he explains.
“With Paper, teams can create, review, revise, manage, and organise — all in shared documents.”
Google Docs, but for creatives?
Largely based on the principle that one basket is good enough for all your office’s creative eggs, Paper provides users with a number of tools, including task-lists, messaging systems and a content creation platform within a single space.
It’s effectively a digital whiteboard, where collaborators can post, tweak and rearrange content. Dropbox wants the service to “supports all phases of the creative process — from start to finish”.
Oh, and yes, you can send your colleagues GIFs too, or tag them using Slack- and Twitter-like mentions.
Dropbox Paper is one large digital whiteboard that allows teams to collab on creative projects
The files created are stored in Dropbox, and can be accessed from the service’s web interface or apps. Additionally, if not viewable in Paper, Dropbox also boasts support for a number of files.
Files can also be embedded and shared with other users in Paper itself.
The service, especially stemming from Dropbox, is an interesting punt for a piece of the collaboration pie. For Dropbox, its the company’s ploy to become more than simply a file storage service. But with that said, it does have a number of challengers and challenges.
Google comes to mind, Microsoft too, with Salesforce also poking its head through the window. Additionally, there’s always the problem of creating apps that are too complicated, or hell-bent on being a jack-of-all-trades. We’re looking at you Frankenbook.
User reviews (at least on Google Play Store) belie the lack of an offline documents mode, and that’s on top of its sluggish sync performance.
Still, while Paper is in its infancy, it is free to try.
You’ll need a Dropbox account, but once logged in, you can give it a try right here.
