Trabalho colaborativo em serviços de armazenamento na nuvem: uma análise do Dropbox

Abstract

Cloud storage service providers have adopted several measures to incentivize the activity of their users as well as attract new ones. One of actions adopted by the major providers for this purpose is to provide the option to carry out collaborative work via data sharing between networked users. In this study, we investigate the relationship between collaborative work and the activity level of the users of Dropbox, one of the most popular services currently. We measure the traffic volume that users generate as they store data in the cloud and make shared folders using data collected from four different networks. Our results indicate that users participating in collaborative work synchronize more data to the cloud. Therefore, these users have higher activity and potentially can pay for the service, suggesting that, despite its cost, collaborative work feature can increase revenue of cloud storage providers.