During a routine google search for box.net mentions and links, I ran into a troubling post on an "elance" type website. I'll let the title speak for itself:

Project: Box.net Clone

Well, this is fun. It's always amazing to think about people's varying perceptions of the complexity and difficulty that goes into developing a technology company. Sure, at the core, anyone can make a site that uploads and downloads a file- heck, you could probably throw in sharing and and sub-users a week later. But this is not your company. The value you are providing is in the reliability, ease of use, support, and of course those few extra features that go above and beyond users' expectations (eg, netvibes and goowy integrations). If this person, or anyone else, thinks that getting into online storage is as easy as creating a "clone" of Box.net, imagine this same provider as the gateway to your critical files. Altogether, this introduces a whole new issue that should be touched on.

If you're like me, you find yourself exploring a handful of new websites every day. Techcrunch and others provide us with no shortage of beta previews for malnourished RSS readers. Will most of these profiled websites still be around by the end of the year? Tough to tell, but my guess is no. Since the barriers to entry are often so minimal (capital, resources, etc) - then, on the converse, the barriers to exit can be similarly small. If you didn't take five million from a VC, then what's stopping you from closing the doors and going back to your day job? I'm not trying to instill fear in anyone- but I think it's an interesting question - and one that should be asked. I know we get asked it daily. The difference is that Box.net has a clear understanding of what it wants to achieve and how it will get there. We don't rely on contextual ads or complicated partnerships to stay around; we rely on our site and service being excellent and users wanting to pay for it. That's all for now :)

Ohh, and by the way, some sweet photo gallery stuff is coming later today.