I have recently sold a Twitter explanation video to a communication company. Doing that I ran into the problem of sending the really big video file to the people that bought the video. I tried Dropbox (another great site) and the receivers could see the video but not download it. Then I found several file sharing services but you had to sign up first and accept their spam afterwards. Not really what I was looking for but I was in a hurry and it solved the problem though not entirely satisfactory.

Now I know that filesharing can be much simpler. One of my friends at the university made a site that adresses that file sharing need in the most elegant way. The site is called Kkloud and works by keywords – you type in a keyword and if someone has shared a file on that keyword you get access to it – if not you can share your own file on that keyword through drag and drop. Now you can share your files with your friends – just share the keyword.

The really cool thing is: the files are only shared as long as you keep the sharing window open. When you close the window they disappear.

The team behind Kkloud made a video to explain this – watch it just to convince yourself that it really is that simple:

I think there are several lessons for programmers to learn from Kkloud:

1. Simple is better. (“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
2. Limitations can make your site stronger. Twitter is another example of this.
3. Even if your idea has been done before, you can do it better

And of course in wishful thinking of any programmer “if you build it they will come” – I surely hope that it turns out to be more important to have built a cool app than it is to have a great business plan. Get the big user base and there is income to be had from that app.

Kkloud recently won the Software part of the Venture Cup and it earned them a well-deserved 50.000 DKK. Congratulations Kkloud – I wish you great succes with your business.