It’s not common practice for me to write reviews of other companies.  But, this is one of those special occasions.

As a software engineer and business person, it’s my prerogative and duty to make software/web sites/etc for other people.  The best way to make software for other people, however, is to make software for myself.  This is precisely what the phrase ‘eating your own dog food’ stands for.  If I can ‘eat it’, others will too.

I just ran across a product, which exemplifies this ideology: http://www.drop.io.  Think tinyurl, but with added perks.  Think mini-blog, but with added perks.  Think content management system, but with added perks.  I can go on.

So what is drop.io really? To quote, and there’s no point in paraphrasing:

Simple private exchange:

Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.”

The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want. To make a drop just click the big red button that says ‘drop it’.

The amount of things you can do on a Drop make me very happy: http://www.drop.io/eatdogfood

To stay on topic though, take a look at the structure of the site itself.  The site in and of itself is a giant ‘drop’.  Granted, its contents are not editable by anyone but the admins.  But, it looks like the admins - the sites’ operators - wanted us to believe that they themselves use the site.  And they’ve succeeded gracefully.  My hats off!

Oh, and as an example, here’s the drop for this article: