Status Update 09.12.2024
Introduction
Hello and welcome to the new Filen Status Update. As always, here is a quick rundown of everything that has been keeping us busy since the last update.
Table of Contents
- Black Friday 2024 Recap
- Infrastructure Investments
- Marketing
- How to... Guides
- IT-Security Day by Heise
- Public Links: Limitation and Explanation
- The Mobile App rework
- The New Beta Testing Program
- Youtube
- Feature Requests
- Conclusion and Final Words
Black Friday 2024 Recap
Now that our black friday sale this year has ended, we’d like to take a moment to share some initial thoughts and insights into how the event unfolded. Overall, we are thrilled with this year’s results, as we not only achieved but exceeded our planned revenue targets. We have set a targeted quantity of lifetime plans, which were all sold out as of 01.12.2024.
This success positions us to move forward with our planned investments in our servers and infrastructure. We’re especially pleased that the initial feedback surrounding the Black Friday campaign has been overwhelmingly positive. Additionally, our new infrastructure and in-house servers successfully passed the stress test during this high-demand period.
Approximately 60-65% of the resources generated from the sale will be reinvested into further expanding our servers and infrastructure. This will not only enhance our current stability, speeds and geo redundany but also create the additional capacity to support our 2025 marketing and expansion campaigns.
Thank you for being a part of this journey—we’re excited to continue delivering a faster, more robust cloud experience!
The remaining resources will be allocated toward the aforementioned marketing campaign, ensuring its success and supporting our efforts to expand and grow in 2025.
More about that in the next paragraphs.
Transfer Speeds and Survey
One of the more debated topics surrounding our Black Friday period was the upload and download speeds experienced by users while utilizing our services. Unfortunately, a bandwidth bug introduced at the launch of our new products caused artificially reduced speeds for many users. The good news is that we were able to address and resolve this issue swiftly with a hotfix, ensuring that uploads and downloads quickly returned to their usual high performance.
That said, the entire period around our new product launches and Black Friday served as a true stress test for our newly implemented in-house infrastructure. We're proud to share that we hit multiple new records across all traffic metrics, both during peak times and under "normal" operational loads.
To make the mixed feedback we've received more actionable from a data perspective, we’d like to ask for your input on your experience with the achieved speeds. This will be instrumental in shaping our upcoming major infrastructure investment, ensuring it aligns with your needs. It only takes 30 seconds to share your insights via a quick multiple-choice survey accessible through the button below.
Please note: We’ve intentionally separated this feedback request from our upcoming general survey to ensure this topic gets the attention it deserves.
Thank you for helping us continue to improve.
The New Client and Web-App Rework
The launch of our reworked client and website has, in our view, been a resounding success. Although we expected that our internal and external testers would not find every single small bug, we had to do a bit more patching than desired as the larger user base naturally explores more scenarios and use cases. This has led us to conclude that we need to expand our beta testing system. We’re still deliberating on the exact form this will take, but our goal is to conduct even more effective beta testing phases for future products.
To ensure a smoother introduction of the desktop client rework, we intentionally opted for a slow-roll release. During this period, we closely monitored our social media channels and support platform to gather all reported bugs. Based on the initial data we received, we released several "hotfix" patches just days after the initial launch, addressing the most important issues. Of course, we will continue to monitor and work on bug fixes over the coming weeks, or until we are confident that all issues have been resolved and we can shift our focus to the next project.
If you're interested in checking out the changes made so far, feel free to visit our GitHub. Additionally, we plan to provide changelogs outside of Discord in the future. Most likely, these will be published as collective posts once enough updates have accumulated, separate from regular status updates.
Important Note:
We are still in the slow-roll release phase, which means no migration from the old client to the new one has occurred yet. The client has undergone such fundamental changes that we are still assessing whether migration will even be possible. More information on this will be shared once the release phase is complete.
Additionally, we are constantly reviewing your feedback beyond just bug reports. To better understand your experiences with the new client and website design, we will also conduct an official survey. However, we plan to wait until more users have transitioned to the new client before launching the survey.
Thank you for your patience and support as we refine this exciting new chapter for our platform!
Marketing
We are now gearing up to prepare our marketing campaign for 2025, focusing primarily on affiliate programs, influencers, and social media. Traditional banner campaigns or questionable cold-calling methods are not part of our strategy. Starting in early 2025, we will initiate test collaborations with influencers to analyze how investments and returns on investment perform across different target groups.
While we will usually initiate contact, if you happen to be an influencer with a substantial following, feel free to check us out or apply for a collaboration! You can find our marketing email on the contact page of our website or use our support tool to get in touch. We'd love to hear from you!
As part of the preparations for this campaign, we will be overhauling our affiliate system, a topic we touched on in our previous status update. To ensure accurate accounting with the German tax authorities and proper invoicing/credit issuance, we will introduce a registration tool. Anyone familiar with affiliate programs from other service providers will recognize the industry-standard practices we intend to follow.
Stay tuned for more updates as we finalize our plans for 2025!
How to... Guides
As you may have noticed, we recently published our first "How-To" tutorials on our blog. These detailed guides provide step-by-step instructions on how to utilize the features of our products effectively.
We are currently evaluating whether to integrate these tutorials into the new Filen Documentation and determining the best approach for organizing information between the blog and the documentation. At present, the Filen Docs primarily focus on more advanced use cases, such as the CLI, SDK, and API.
The documentation offers the advantages of a clear structure, improved organization, and long-term relevance. In contrast, the blog serves as a dynamic platform, ideal for sharing news, announcements, and events. If we decided to use the blog, we would have to think of a new solution for the blog to make the guides user-friendly and clearly available
Rest assured, regardless of the approach we choose, there will be a centralized location where you can easily access all tutorials.
Stay tuned for updates, and thank you for your continued support!
The Heise IT Security Day
As mentioned in our previous update, we recently had the honor of delivering a keynote at the Heise IT Security Day in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Our topic: "Seamless Security – Client-Side Encryption for the Cloud."
We are currently awaiting the official photos from the event but are already planning a detailed blog post to share all the highlights and insights with you.
We are excited to participate in more internet security events in the future and to become increasingly active in this important ecosystem. The connections we made and the experiences we gained will help us identify new opportunities and make informed decisions to further enhance Filen.
Public Links: Limitation and Explanation
We recently announced that public links will be limited to Pro account access only. In a previous communication, we provided a detailed explanation as to why this decision was necessary. We want to emphasize once again that this decision was neither made lightly nor intended as a way to generate additional revenue.
The Short Version:
The primary reason behind this change is the growing pressure from external parties due to illegal content being shared through our platform. At our current stage as a company, we cannot afford to lose integral business partners and service providers because of recurring copyright violations.
We have always taken incoming DMCA notices seriously and worked diligently to address them as swiftly as possible. However, the high frequency of these notices has understandably caused frustration. No one wants to keep informing us about the same violations only to see them again and again.
When public links are used, they truly are public. This means that if an employee from Company X searches online for "Program/Movie/File from Company X cracked download," they may find the content openly shared via public channels on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, blogs, or elsewhere using our links.
The Problem:
When the issue became too frequent to ignore, we conducted an internal analysis to determine how we could mitigate it. What we found was striking: 98% of all DMCA reports came from free accounts. This wasn’t surprising, as accounts sharing public content have a high likelihood of being banned. Unfortunately, the individuals behind these accounts simply created new ones and continued their activities.
The Solution:
Following our initial analyses after implementing the public link limitation, the results have been exactly what we hoped for. We have seen a reduction in DMCA reports by up to 95%, and this trend continues to improve. Even a small paid plan (e.g., for 1€) becomes unsustainable for abusers if they have to repeatedly create and purchase new accounts & plans.
Moving Forward:
For now, this change will remain in place indefinitely. However, this is not the beginning of a shift toward placing more features behind a paywall. It is simply a necessary step to ensure the stability and sustainability of our platform.
In the future, we will continue to evaluate new approaches and refine our sharing functionalities, particularly with the development of Filen Spaces in mind. Thank you for your understanding and ongoing support as we navigate these challenges.
The Mobile App Update
With the rework of our desktop client, web app, and website now complete, our next focus is the mobile app. In our last update, we briefly touched on this topic, but here’s a more detailed overview of what we can share at this point.
The upcoming mobile update for Android and iOS will be a kind of “mini rework.” It will be larger than a standard update but not a completely new app like the recent client overhaul. The primary focus areas will be functionality, native design adjustments, and overall improvements to the UX/UI. In particular, the Android app is overdue for a look and feel that not only fits Android but also provides a seamless user experience.
Planned Features and Enhancements:
In addition to a refreshed design, we aim to overhaul several key features, including:
- Automatic Camera Uploads: We’re improving this feature to make it more reliable and user-friendly.
- Media Streaming: We’re introducing a new integrated media player to enhance the streaming experience directly within the app.
Timeline:
We currently anticipate that the update will enter the beta phase by the end of Q1 2025. However, it’s too early to estimate how long the testing phase will last. Speaking of testing, we’d like to share more about our approach to beta testing…
The New Beta Testing Program
The release of our new desktop app was a significant success, with most functionalities running smoothly for the majority of users. However, we’ve noticed that many user-specific bugs went undetected during testing. While it’s expected that the diverse use cases of hundreds of thousands of users will uncover issues that a beta test group might miss, we’d like to increase the diversity of our testers for future phases.
It’s crucial for us to have a sufficient number of testers across all device types, operating systems, and general use cases to maintain a balanced testing environment. For example, the new client requires a representative number of users testing on Windows, Mac, and Linux, each exploring different functionalities in depth. Although we conduct extensive internal testing, some bugs inevitably occur when users perform actions in contexts or configurations we didn’t anticipate.
The Plan:
We’re introducing a simple and anonymous "application process" for anyone interested in becoming a beta tester. In the online application form, we’ll ask questions about your devices, operating systems, general user behavior, and how long you’ve been using Filen.
This information will help us ensure that our testing pool reflects a diverse range of setups and use cases. We’ll also promote this opportunity beyond this status update to ensure it reaches as many potential testers as possible.
Why Become a Beta Tester?
- Early Access: Beta testers will get early access to new updates and products. Typically, every major release goes through a beta phase first.
- Free Testing Space: While actively participating in the program, you’ll receive dedicated storage space to use for testing purposes.
- Additional Perks: Based on your performance and contributions to the program, outstanding testers may be granted further benefits as a token of our appreciation.
The link to the online application will be posted here on the blog shortly. We’re incredibly grateful for everyone who applies and helps us improve Filen for all users. Thank you in advance for your support!
Youtube
After discussing this for a long time, we finally plan to activate our YouTube channel and make tutorials and feature previews available in video format. There's actually only one decision we still need to make: how we want to handle the voiceover. We're including this decision in the next survey because we see it as another opportunity to involve you in the decision-making process.
The primary options are whether we should insert text-based comments into the videos, use an AI-generated voice, hire a voice actor, or collectively ignore our wonderfully strong German accents and do the voiceovers ourselves. The decision criteria, of course, include cost, effort, and how well it would be received.
Feature Requests
From the feedback we received during our Q&A, we noticed that many of you expressed a desire for a centralized hub for feature requests. We've now addressed this. On https://features.filen.io/, you'll find all feature requests, and you can rate them to help us better align our planning and development of updates with your needs. While the platform isn't 100% complete yet, its core functionality is already working. To avoid redundancy, we have removed the GitHub Feature request option. github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/feature_request.md.
Conclusion and Final Words
As we reflect on this period, we’re excited about the progress made and the path ahead. From exceeding Black Friday targets to launching new features, reworks, and infrastructure improvements, your support has been key to our success.
Initiatives like the feature request hub, beta testing expansion, and upcoming mobile updates showcase our commitment to enhancing your experience. While challenges like public link restrictions were necessary, they’ve strengthened our platform's sustainability.
With 2025 on the horizon, we’re focused on growth through innovative marketing, improved documentation, and engaging content. Thank you for your trust and feedback as we continue to build a stronger Filen together!