• Martin, Lucas, Sean, Josh, and Brett only employees.
• Company is founded in the back of an office in Stewart St., Santa Monica

July 1999: First Techs on Staff

• Lucas and Martin become full time.

August 1999: Girls, Girls Girls!

• Karen and Kim get hired, our first real super developer and super saleswomen.
• Same month, Ed gets our account at Global Center.

July 2000: Xdrive launches live port from Perl to Java

August 2000: Big Business

• Xdrive launches B2B offering, Workgroup
• Launched spam news letter "Intelligent X," which will later become the seed of MySpace.com
• 4 Million users
• Revenue reaches 680K per month
• 20,000 registrations a day
• New Execs are hired (bum, bum, bummmm!)
• Starts fourth found of investments, "Series D, the 'Mezzanine' level"
  • $72M already raised

September 2000: On the Road Again * Xdrive announces new roadmap which includes:

• • Additions to Plus
    • Music Page
    • Photo Album
    • Collaboration and MetaData
    • eFax
  • New Platforms
    • WAP Wireless
    • Linux Desktop Application
    • Macintosh Desktop Application
  • Community Support
    • API & SDK: Developer Community
• Start planning to move to the Water Garden (bum, bum, bummmmm!)

July 2001: New Name

• Xdrive becomes Xdrive Technologies to separate product (Plus) from brand.

October 2001: New Home

• Xdrive announces new bonus and pay program
  • May have been illegal under California law
  • Promised bonuses will not be given
  • All expected raises will be delayed

Dec 2001: Xdrive closes 4th round and final implosion is immanent.

• Xdrive moves to the Water Garden
• New Execs finalize newest business plan (We're going to sell to Telcos! Note: telcos won't run on Sun Hardware, but why bother with details)
• Most of engineering staff quits by end of January
• Regular bi-monthly layoff's (The Purges) start.
• Code is forked between Workgroup and Plus and the two branches diverge.

April 2002: Xdrive Goes Nuclear

• Xdrive goes for pay. With 2 weeks or warning and no upgrade path, 13M users are booted and 5K paying users are left.
• SNI turns off Xdrive's storage after failure to pay and site goes down for several days (application was on SNI storage, along with user's files.)
• Paul Gigg and his Ivy League Road Warriors staff are forced out
• Xdrive's HUGE sales force start pushing new Xdrive Installed Telecom product.

March 2002: Skip Out on the Rent

• Xdrive sneaks of the Water Garden in the middle of the night.
  • They take the sign
  • They do NOT leave a rent check
  • They stealth off to Marina del Rey

July 2002: A New Chapter 11

• Xdrive Technologies under Karl declares bankruptcy.

November 2002: Backup...at least your files.

• Xdrive releases its backup client, which will pave way for Xdrive LLC to make a profit.

January 2003: Xdrive Rebooted

• Original founders buy Xdrive's debts and re-start company with about 1/2M in cash.
• Company is legally different entity, Xdrive LLC buys Xdrive Technology assets and starts with a clean slate.
• Chad is taken out of stasis and runs site from haunted Marina del Rey office while the re-boot is starting.
• Finally, Xdrive is rebooted in the orginal office in Stewart St., Santa Monica
  • Employees receive free vats for mexican cheese dip upon signing

March 2003: Folder Upload

• First folder upload is launched. (3rd party applet)
• New Web UI
• Xdrive launches GoToast metrics tracking.
• Customer Support phone is launched. All emails are answered within 3 days.

June 2003: In the Black

• Xdrive is profitable!
• Xdrive is collecting enough in user and business subscriptions to turn a profit!
  Our Staff is:
  • 3 Execs: CEO, COO, and CFO
  • 10 Engineers
  • 1 DBA
  • 2 Systems Admins
  • 1 QA
  • 2 Customer Support
  • NO SALES!
• Last 4.1 Desktop client is launched (Good-Bye HTTP servlets and hello SOAP)
• Public Folders are launched.

July 2003: Siyanara

• Xdrive Japan is split from Xdrive

August 2003: The Urge to Merge

• Xdrive merges Workgroup and Plus code base and database back into single base.
• Xdrive launches new tiered pricing plan.
• Annual Subscriptions are started.
• 0MB Users are launched
  • These users are shared with from Xdrive users.
  • They have no space of their own.
  • They will become a huge portion of system load.

September: It Counts!

• Xdrive dumps GoToast for Omniture

October 2003: Get Down

• Folder download is launched.
• Legacy ala-carte users are migrated to tiered pricing plans.
  • Ala-carte billing is shut down.
• Locks in database become bad enough to start hanging the site.

November 2003: Let's Go Steady

• New UI is launched.
• Performance release 1
  • Migrate last users from ECCS to NetApps (Hallejuia!)
  • Uploads go from avg 1.7 per user per day to 3.5
  • Total start up avg goes from 45 to 24 sec.
  • Site hang issues are resolved.

Febuary 2004: It's Another Performance:

• Finish move from old XFS EJBs to new XFSController system.
  • Loading goes test large file tree goes from 47 sec. over DSL to 16 sec.
  • Signups triple in speed to 5.8 minutes.

March 2004: Changes

• Migrate from old billing portal to PaymenTech
• Xdrive 4.5.1 goes Beta
• Xdrive moves out from starting office...to shared space right next door.
  • Bathroom to follow...

July 2004: Scottish Pride!

• McCabes' list serve is founded!

September 2004: CompUSA (it's like Radio Shack, but more out of business)

• Xdrive launches the "Manage Space" tool that allows for automated upselling.
• Xdrive get's contract to sell pre-paid subscriptions in CompUSA?

October 2004: Read my Mail

• Xdrive launches the email attachment fetcher.
• Customer Support goes 24x5.

Novemeber 2004: International Blunder Machine

• Stolen CompUSA keys posted to Google forum.
• Xdrive buys its first non-NetApp storage device in 2 years, an IBM NAS Gateway 500
• Machine promptly dies anytime someone touches a file over 2GB (int in an address for metadata...uh, huh)
  • For first time since the re-boot, users loose data.
  • Users who uploaded onto the IBM loose data. That 12hr window is unrecoverable.
• Machine is decommissioned and returned.
• Xdrive launched auto-provisioning for Workgroup Customers
• Xdrive starts "Mail us your disk" service.

January 2005: Fax It!

• Xdrive launches fax feature
• Xdrive launches photos tab

February 2005: Music to our Ears

• Xdrive launches Music Tab
• Web Backup is launched.

March 2005: Mark It!

• Xdrive launched bookmark Tab
• Email attachment fetcher v1.2

April 2005: How do I look

• Xdrive launched photos tab v1.2
• Xdrive Photo Editor is launched.
• Public folders are launched.
• Web Grab v1 is launched.

June 2005: Small Business

• Xdrive is doing about $400K-$500K in monthky revenue
• Xdrive has about 40k paying users and about 1500 Workgroups

July 2005: Sold!

• Xdrive is sold to AOL

September 2005: Who's the Boss?

• Xdrive kills of all WebLogic servers and moves to JBoss.
• Week of migration, Xdrive does company wide demo to AOL.
  • Servers to "touched" for that demo, by the guy doing the demo, during the demo...it was like David Copperfield!

October(?) 2005: Moving

• Xdrive moves from Stewart St. Office to AOL office on 4th., Street Santa Monica.

November: Thanksgiving Drama

• A lunch goes that that stabilizes remaining JBoss issues

December 2005: Moving again

• Xdrive moves from DSW in LA to Netscape datacenter owned by AOL.
• Data follows on truck, we drove NetApps from LA to Silicon Valley.
• Xdrive moves from SUN to Linux Redhat and does so with a giant scream
  • Linux TCP/IP stack and Apache don't like uploader
  • New hardware also breaks SOAP for a while
  • All issues are resolved in <72hrs
• While kicking the Solaris habit, we also loose our BigIP and hardware SSL

July 2006: Moving Again

• Xdrive moves east and takes it's data with it. (bye bye Netscape. So long and thanks for all the bytes!)
• Data is migrated to OnStore (Which crashes like the Titanic, but with less survivors).
• MemoryBank PRD (not done) is broken into 4 phases.
• Phase one is created as Mystique

Aug 2006: Moving AGAIN

• Xdrive migrates everything to iBrix. (Bye bye NetApps. So long and thanks for all the memories...snapshots, backups, and swapped disks!)
• Let's be flexible: AOL get's new direction and it is Adobe's Flex.
  • Mystique will be done in flex
  • Xdrive will partner with Schematic as our Flex code house.

September 2006: In Russia, AOL Moves You

• Xdrive goes FREE (Again!)
• Xdrive launches Plus (A project code named after the product it built upon, and launched right before an office move)
  • Plus offers user no new visible functionality
  • Registrations are now through AOL
• Xdrive leaves Santa Monica to move into Beverly Hills AOL Office
• Xdrive opts for smaller cubicals (6x8 instead of 8x8) because of staffing projections

October: Retro Roadmap

• Xdrive announces "new" roadmap (See Sept. 2000)
  • MemoryBank
    • Music
    • Photos
    • Videos
    • Collaboration and MetaData
  • Community Support
    • API & SDK: Developer Community
• Development starts on MemoryBank Phase 1 (Mystique)

November 2006: Marvel-ous Products

• Gio and crew prepare to transition Xdrive to Robert.
• ShowMaker is handed to marketing to get final product name.

December 2006: Holiday Diet

• Holiday layoffs cut staffing projections and AOL City Guide is pretty much shut down taking away most of our neighbors.
• We layoff all in house 3rd Tier customer support.
• We get our first full time Flex developer.
  • He sees code from Schematic and dies...or at least has a big fit.

January 2007: Stop Scheming

• Schematic is dropped as our Flex developer group.
• We re-start the code.
• New dev manager starts planning MemoryBank Phase 2 (Rogue)

March 2007: The Xdrive Mystique

• MemoryBank Phase 1 (Mystique) launches as "Xdrive Showmaker." (Marketing only had 3 months to brand it!)
  • JSON v1.1 is launched but not approved for announcement.
• Full Integration launches (Death of xBill)
  • Manage Space page is replaced with hard coded message saying "Check back soon, feature will be available shortly."

April(?) 2007: Take a Picture

• Xdrive merges with AOLP to form Personal Media.
• Rogue is canceled and replaced with BrassMonkey. (Marvel names out, drink names in!)
  • BrassMonkey will be run by AOLP product group, and they are given lead
  • BrassMonkey will be Xdrive ShowMaker launched in AOLP.

June 2007: Open for Business

• The JSON API goes live on dev.aol.com

July 2007: Dead Monkey

• BrassMonkey finishes and is not launched beta.
  • AOL Beta turned it down for numerous problems, most simply none of the parts worked together. (See Automatic Upload which uploaded media into folders and "innovative" UI that had no folders to find auto-uploaded media in.)
• Project is transitioned to Cosmopolitan

September 2007: TechCrunched

• Cosmopolitan gets the monkey good enough to launch for TechCrunch
  • JSON v1.2 is launched but not approved for announcement.

December 2007: A New API

• JSON v1.2 is announced to the public

January 2008: Walking on Eggshells

• Xdrive launches Facebook widget to show off at CES.

Feburary 2008: Registration, all over again

• We replace the AOL registration front end with our own, which is written against the same RSP backend.
• Talks start about reintroducing A/B flows, promos, pass through landing pages, etc.

May 2008: BlueString ...again

• We add aggregation
• Thumbnails on folders...ain't that easy.

June 2008: Give Us Enough BlueString, We'll Hang Ourselves.

• AOL Masters realize the BlueString is spelled BS and demand the Xdrive retrench itself as a smaller, leaner endeavor.
• Along the way, in examining Xdrive costs, AOL calculates AOL Ops is charging $8M to run a server farm that an outsourced data center only charges $2M for.
• GM Decides that life without BlueString isn't worth his time, so he opts to shut down the division.
• Most of the staff will be laid off, some will stay to help with shutdown.

September 2008: Not Going Cheap...Not Going at All.

• GM Tries to sell Xdrive, and we receive offers.
• None of the offers can pay for AOL's legal cost to process the sale.

October 2008: Bippity Boppiity Bebo!

• David Liu shuts down Xdrive and several other smaller AOL sudidiaries to buy Bebo
  • Bebo has an $850 price tag
  • It is a EU Facebook also ran
  • The projected savings from headcount and operating expenses go to the price

Dec 2009: All not gold OR Vindication

• David Liu leaves AOL amid giant Bebo Disaster
• New president checks David's cost savings and finds that he shut down PROFITABLE divsions.
• He had overstated costs and savings
• Shutdowns that are still in progress are halted (ala Userplane)
• Xdrive not so lucky