Nomadesk, Not Just Another File Sharing Service, Launches FolderLink (Video)

The hundreds of web and desktop clients built for sharing, backup or on-the-fly synchronization of digital files that have sprung up in the past ten years have made the whole concept of having the cloud at least partly remove your computer hard drive’s reason for being largely a commodity.

It’s the reason why we don’t exactly jump up and down out of sheer excitement when another such service launches and asks for a TechCrunch review.

It’s what I keep telling my friend Filip Tack, CEO of Nomadesk, one of the many players in this field: that in order to make waves in this space it’s far from enough to build a great product, and that it’s at least as important to have a better-than-average distribution model and a PR and marketing strategy that allows you to get noticed almost on a daily basis by people who can spread the word. And then some.

For what it’s worth: Nomadesk really has an awesome desktop client (Windows and Mac) that goes far beyond most of what competitors have to offer, and the distribution part of the equation is slowly coming to fruition as well (the company recently signed a deal with Bell Canada for the company to use Nomadesk’s solution as a white-label service they can offer directly to their customers, and has similar agreements in place and in the pipeline).

But while the company has been consistently growing after its inception a couple of years ago, albeit slowly, the startup has received very little attention from tech press and industry pundits so far. I genuinely think that Nomadesk deserves more of it, as its service stacks up against most proponents in this space, particularly in the way you can control your virtual fileserver(s) from your mobile phone.

Maybe a new feature being launched today will raise some eyebrows: Nomadesk is today introducing a welcome feature that allows users to share an entire folder – regardless of its size – with anyone with an Internet connection and a browser. Simply use the desktop client to right-click any folder you’d like to share, and you can relay the link to whoever you would like to share it with, and they don’t need to have the software installed let alone be a registered Nomadesk user to access all the files in the folder.

As you can tell from the video below, it’s pretty easy to do and it ‘just works’, and the fact that there’s no folder size limit is very appealing. The only thing it really lacks at this point is the ability to preview documents and videos from the Nomadesk interface, but I’m told that’s coming shortly.

For your background: Nomadesk (formerly Aventiv) was founded in 2004 and is based in Belgium (which, whether you like it or not, doesn’t exactly help with getting on influencers’ radars). The company has raised about €3.3 million euro (roughly $4.75 million) from GIMV, one of the largest investment firms in these parts, and while it has a direct sales channel through its website its strategy is to offer the service as a white-label plug and play solution to as many OEMs as possible.

You can sign up for Nomadesk and enjoy a one-month free trial with no restrictions on their website, so I suggest you try out both the desktop client and the mobile website (nomadesk.mobi) to see how the service stacks up to its competitors.