The popular file-sharing service is rebranding itself completely and rolling out a host of new features for the cloud file sharing market that’ll enable it to compete with Box and Dropbox.
If you’ve ever tried to send a huge file to someone, chances are one of the solutions you used was YouSendIt, but now, the file-sharing service wants to be known as more than just an email attachment solution.
YouSendIt is completely rebranding itself, changing its name to “Hightail” and promising to introduce a host of new services and features that it felt would be constrained by the old name. The service’s 43 million users can expect to see the change rolled out over the next few weeks.
“The launch of Hightail is more than simply a new name,” said Hightail CEO, Brad Garlinghouse in a press release. “It signifies the beginning of a new company with new products and a new way of thinking. We have already far outgrown our original use case of only sending large files, and our name should reflect where we are as a company today as well as where we want to go in the future. We’re renewing our commitment to helping our customers keep their ideas moving, and of course, making sure their life’s work doesn’t get dropped or stuck in a box.”
Is that last line a deliberately worded shot at competitors Box or Dropbox? Sounds like it. Garlinghouse isn’t afraid to get prickly with the competition, as he publicly traded shots with Box CEO Aaron Levie last year.
With this move, Garlinghouse is definitely signalling his intentions to take the cloud storage companies head on. YouSendIt’s brand had always been associated with sending files rather than storing them, something highlighted by its logo, a green and blue striped paper plane. By changing its name and logo, the company is signalling its move towards becoming an all integrated cloud storage service, not just a large file sender.
Speaking to Arik Hesseldahl at AllThingsD, Garlinghouse said the previous name constrained the company, “It didn’t indicate our current product breadth, let along where we’re headed.”
And where they’re headed includes a move toward unlimited storage for $15.99 instead of a tiered system, greater mobile and tablet presence, more enterprise business and through its acquisition of Found, a search service for files stored in the cloud.
Here’s a video the company made to accompany the release
