Dropbox Announces Datastores

Though Dropbox is known for its file syncing service, the company is expanding its service to more than syncing. While announcing that the company has reached 175 million users who save more than one billion files every 24 hours at their developer conference, the company announced a new API called Datastores, a set of API that allows third party apps to use Dropbox for syncing users app data.

With Datastores, developers can now have all of a user’s data saved on their Dropbox and synced across multiple applications. The user’s app data can be used offline and sync when there is an internet connection available and can handle conflicting syncs by merging the changes.

Though the API is new, the concept is rather old. For a while now, products like 1Password uses a file synced through Dropbox to keep user passwords in sync. Though with a new API designed to sync app data between platforms, programs like 1Password will have an easier time syncing users data between apps. As of right now, Datastores is available for iOS, Android and JavaScript developers.

In addition to the announcement of Datastores, Dropbox announced a new feature called Drop-ins, which allows users to attach any file from their Dropbox to an email. One of the app that is already using the new service is Dropbox’s own Mailbox client for iOS, which is available for download in the iTunes app store.

While most of the things announced today do not yet apply to consumers, the features has some revealing indications that the company wants yo become “spiritual successor to the hard drive”.