Dropbox Now Has 500 Million Registered Users

Dropbox now has 500 million registered users. The popular cloud storage and file-sharing service, which was founded in 2007, announced on Monday that it has hit the half a billion user base milestone. It didn't disclose the exact number of paid users it has, however.

One of the first cloud storage services to arrive, Dropbox has grown widely and aggressively in the past three years. The service hit 100 million users in November 2012, 200 million in November 2013, and 300 million users to the service since.

Dropbox announced that its service has created 3.3 billion connections by sharing with each other. These "connections" have seen a surge of 51 percent since last year. "[...] As new people join, they're bringing friends, family, and co-workers along. 44 percent of new accounts were opened when existing users introduced people to Dropbox. That's making for an even more creative and collaborative community," the company wrote in a blog post.

The blog post detailed the recent growth further, saying, "Even though Dropbox is based in the US, our last 100 million users have come from all over the globe. Brazilians, Indians, Brits, and Germans join Americans at the top of the list of new signups."

The cloud storage service didn't disclose the exact number of Business users it has. To recall, as of last November, there were 150,000 Dropbox for Business users. Evidently Dropbox is growing at a faster rate now, though the company now also faces stiff competition from a number of cloud storage providers including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Box.

As it works to offset pressure imposed on its by its rivals, Dropbox has partnered with many companies to leverage on their technologies to better serve its customers and expand. Its partnership with Microsoft, for instance, allows Office for iPad users to directly save files in Dropbox. Users can also edit documents using Office without leaving Dropbox app.