Anonymous uploaders, heads up!
DivShare is blowing up, and our 56,000+ registered users have been a huge part of our success. We love you guys, and if you have an account already, nothing in this post will affect you. For users who are uploading anonymously, we are making a few changes to make DivShare a better place to publish your stuff.
From here on out, anonymous files will stay online for seven days, and you’ll still get the same freedom of unlimited downloads and no bandwidth restrictions. To make your files stay online forever, it’s as easy as signing up for a free account — all you need is an e-mail address.
Anonymous files will also not be automatically added to our Flash video conversion queue, but you can still add them manually from the download page after logging in or signing up.
If you’ve got a lot to upload, grab an account. We’ll ask you to sign up or log in after you upload more than 10 files anonymously.
There ya go! As we said, nothing changes for registered users, and you’ll still enjoy the convenience of being able to upload a few files before logging into or signing up for your account. You’ve probably got one question: Why are we making these changes? Here’s why:
» To encourage signups and build the DivShare community
» To discourage users from anonymously uploading files that violate our content standards
One last thing. Files that have been uploaded anonymously before today will remain online — however, starting in 24 hours, any anonymous files that haven’t been downloaded for more than 30 days will expire and be removed. So, if you have anything you’ve stored anonymously that you want, grab that file soon. Since almost all of our power users have DivShare accounts, we don’t expect this to be a big problem, but let us know if you do run into any issues during the transition to the new anonymous uploading rules.
In other news, we’re working on a ton of cool stuff, including big server upgrades, new Flash embeds, and tools that allow you to add your DivShare files directly to your profile on your favorite social networks. Stay tuned!
May 15th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
What about files that were uploaded anonymously and are in our/my favorites? We must download and upload ‘em to our accounts?
May 15th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
St. Alex: If those files are already online, they’ll only expire if they go un-downloaded for 30 days. As for future anonymous files, the user will have to sign up for an account to keep his or her uploads online forever. And, of course, you can download them and add them to your own account as well.
May 15th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Ok, thank you
May 15th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Very nice new policy.
You will have the abandoned files easily removed.
I wonder is there anyway to view statics of the divshare.
Like number of registered users, total number of files etc…
May 15th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I can admit that for the NEW anonymous uploads making this change of pollicy is good, but let me say my opinion: in the time when some anonymous users uploaded files to your site you made a promise in the right corner of the site that said this:
DivShare is the free file hosting service
for everyone. No registration required!
Upload unlimited files
Serve unlimited downloads
Files stay online forever!
No pop-up ads or spam
You mentioned that Files stay online forever without a specification that they need to sign up so this to happen. The new policy is ok, but let me ask and beg you to maintain your promise and reconsider the decision of the 30 days rule, so that you can maintain your professional feeling and your image of a very trustfull free service: all the files that were uploaded until this blog post to remain, like you said, FOREVER. After the may 15th it is MORALLY ok to change this and I agree with you that it is very hard to maintain this service as good as in the beginings (I know that in “terms of use” you mention that you can make modifications to everything without notifications but I’m asking you this for your own good: to maintain your good image.. I know you guys are well intentioned!)
One more thing: if my group allows files to be uploaded by anyone, and an anonymous user will upload a file to my group, will his file uploaded to my group be deleted after the 7 days?
Oh, and I think you have to change this from the main page:
“DivShare is the free file hosting service
for everyone. No registration required!
Upload unlimited files
Serve unlimited downloads
Files stay online forever!
No pop-up ads or spam”
Thanks
May 15th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
^I disagree half of the stuff.
Anyways, this is good for the servers and everyone else that has registered. Plus, if people are going to keep uploading anonymously, then they might as well just register, it’s not hard.
Now, only if you guys can do a batch upload thing. For example, do the same right now with the batch uploading you have, but instead, make it 200 MB max for each file, instead of all of it as a whole. It would help out so much. If you guys already did that, then I did not know.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Is it possible to make uploads resumable?
May 17th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Silence is an answer too.
Thanks anyway
May 19th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
If you did this, how we can now be sure that you wouldn’t delete files of now registered users if you have some fee later for using service like RapidShare?
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Hi Shumi,
Thanks for your insightful feedback. We’ll be making a lot of changes to the front page over the next week or so, so that will fix any issues with the text or description of our features — and there’s also a notice on the anonymous upload success page that alerts users of the new changes.
On the subject of previously uploaded anonymous files, we hear you, but we also think that the 30 days of inactivity is a fair cut-off point, and we’ve found that a lot of the anonymous files have simply been abandoned or never used by their uploaders.
In groups, the anonymous rule will have the same effect, but your users will be alerted and will have the opportunity to add their files to a new account immediately after uploading.
Hope this helps! Let us know if you have more questions, and thanks for being a part of the site. Have a great day,
Rob
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Thanks for the kind reply. I assure you that I am trying to understand you as much as I can but I don’t understand why anonymous uploads to groups are to be deleted in 7 days. I don’t understand this because any of this upload to a group is helping that group, and the group owner and its menbers that have accounts to your service, so this decision is, unfortunately, in the detriment of divshare registered members because any of that anonymous uploads helps its memebrs and have a positive effect to the group growing. I am asking you to reconsider this decision, and, if it isn’t so hard, to make a change, before the change of divshares face, to the tehnical part that involves this decision. I am thinking this decision will be a benefit to everyone.
Let me say why will help me:
In my forum there are different ocasions to attach thing by my users, I asked them to use divshare.com service because I want to be independent of my hosts space. But the process of registering will scarry the ocasionaly users of the forum that want to put a file to be shared with others, so they will use the forums attachament system or another uploading site solution. By only saying to upload to the forums groups they will not only be a contributor for the growing of the group but they will be less scared about the registering procedure. I know it is very easy, but many users are superficial or time-limited or technial-limited and don’t want more troubles.
Waiting for an answer and with great respect,
Shumi
June 9th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
ok