We've extremely pleased to announce that our friends and partners at Box.net have just rolled out a pretty novel suite of "Open Box" services to their 1,000,000 users. Box.net is the leader in online file storage -- and thus a key repository of online content. So if you've got 1m users storing their content on your service, how do you take it to the next level?
Box.net is glad you asked. The answer is by now allowing their users to instantly "edit, publish, sign and fax their documents, crop photos and preview CAD files". Editing via our friends and partner Zoho and also ThinkFree ... publish via Scribd ... E-Sign and Fax sign via EchoSign ... pretty cool. In addition, since Zoho has already integrated EchoSign, now documents can be create and edited in Zoho; signed, tracked and filed in EchoSign, and then stored in Box.net as well.
Beyond the fact that Box.net is a great and highly valuable (and thoughtful) service, what we found particular interesting in their approach is that Box.net has in essence created a platform for their 1m users not by just "opening up", but by going further and building the core first integrations themselves. They seeded their new platform with best-of-breed partners by building deep and slick integrations that have obvious and core value for their base from the get-go. If you build it, they come faster if there's a great reason already to go there ;)
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