Docstoc Grows Into a Service to Keep All Your Docs Online and Updated

Today Docstoc, a nice service that I normally use when I need to embed a document into a blog post, has a major announcement today that is supposed to change the way people use the service entirely with the launch of two new features: MyDocs and Sync. The idea for today’s enhancement of the service is to build a place for you to store all your documents online, share them easily or keep them private, preview them wherever and whenever you need, at the same time keeping documents synced with the latest versions on your hard drive.

Docstoc MyDocs is basically a place to store all your documents in any format supported by Docstoc and easily access them from any computer online. The powerful preview functionality allows you to quickly view your documents even when you are not on your computer. A very intriguing part is that Docstoc actually provides free unlimited storage space for all your documents so even if you rarely need to access your documents from a different computer, I think it won’t hurt to use it at least for backup of your documents in case anything unexpected happens to them. Besides, you can synchronize absolutely any other folders from your desktop with Docstoc, thus making it a good option for backup that will perform sync without you paying attention to it.

Docstoc Sync is a small desktop application both for PC and Mac that allows you to easily synchronize all the documents uploaded to MyDocs with the current versions of the documents on your hard drive and upload newly-created documents without even thinking of it. Besides, this same application can be used to upload those documents you want to send to public sections of the website and share them with the community.

So in addition to using Docstoc as a free backup for all your documents and other folders for easy online access or retrieval should you need one, I also see good potential for the service as a collaboration tool because any document stored on Docstoc can be shared or emailed to a friend or colleague - which makes the sync functionality even more useful.

The only problem I see for Docstoc is that it is still a relatively young startup. And while I know they have a great team and tons of excellent features, I believe they will first need to persuade anyone interested that the service can actually be trusted. And once people do trust the service, it is absolutely possible that they will introduce some paid-for services as well. For now unlimited free backup of documents certainly is appealing enough for people to try out, especially with no fees attached. So if the service is stable and does not raise any privacy concerns, they must have a very bright future ahead.

Here is the video demonstrating the new features: