| Developer(s) | Dropbox |
|---|---|
| Initial release | April 9, 2014[1] |
| Operating system | Android, iOS, web |
| Type | Photo storage and sharing |
| Website | carousel |
Dropbox Carousel was a photo and video[1] management app offered by Dropbox.[2] The third-party native app, available on Android and iOS,[3] allowed users to store, manage, and organize photos.[4] Photos were organized by date, time and event[5] and backed up on Dropbox.[1] It competed in this space against other online photo storage services such as Google's Google Photos, Apple's iCloud, and Yahoo's Flickr.[5] Chris Lee, Dropbox's head of product development for Carousel described the app as an add-on to Dropbox, a “dedicated experience for photos and videos” and a space for “reliving personal memories”.[5]
Mailbox founder, Gentry Underwood unveiled Carousel at a gathering in San Francisco on April 9, 2014.[1] Much of the features in Carousel come from Snapjoy, a photo start-up, that Dropbox acquired on December 19, 2012.[6] When Carousel was launched, it marked amongst many others, a series of acquisitions made by Dropbox to prep up before opening its stock for public offering.[1] The acquisitions would help demonstrate its expansive product offerings pitching potential profitability to investors.[1]
In December 2015, Dropbox announced that Carousel would be shut down and some Carousel features would be integrated into the primary Dropbox application. On March 31, 2016, Carousel was deactivated.[7]
Carousel prompted users to free local storage once it had synced and backed-up local photos to the cloud.[3] Flashback was a feature (enabled by default) that showed past photos or videos taken the same day, a year, or some years back.[3] Flashback used an algorithm designed to identify human faces - resulting in greater likelihood of the user's picture or people in the user's close circle appearing.[3] A scrollable timeline, which was earlier a scroll wheel, at the bottom let the user scroll to photo(s) at a specific date with a finger swipe.[1]