The latest social media network has appeared in the most unlikely of places – inside your Dropbox folders. Frenzy is a private social network which you can use to share files, status updates, messages and more. All you need is a Mac with Dropbox installed, using either a free or a paid account.

The advantage to using an app like Frenzy to keep up with your friends, as well as share files, is the absolute privacy that it provides, giving you complete control over your files, photos and more, unlike with public social networks like Facebook. It could also prove useful in a work environment, as a slick alternative to services like Yammer. The drawback, however, is that it only works on Macs, which will definitely limit the app’s potential as a private social network.

After installing Frenzy, the first thing you will be prompted to do is determine your own keyboard shortcut for quickly sharing files and links from your computer through the Frenzy network, or you can just stick with Frenzy’s suggested keyboard shortcut.

The next step will be to install the Firefox extension, which allows you to use the service to share links from your browser. All other browsers work out of the box.

You can also choose the location where files shared through Frenzy are saved. By default, all of your shared folders will be included in the list, but you can uncheck any folders you don’t want to use through the app’s preferences.

If after installing Frenzy you share more folders with friends, you will be asked if you wish to use these folders with Frenzy as well.

So how does Frenzy work? It stores all of your real-time updates in hidden folders inside your Dropbox shared folder, which is of course automatically synced using the service. You can type messages and status updates directly within the Frenzy window, determining which shared folder you want the message to go to, with the ability to send it to multiple folders simultaneously, in effect allowing you to communicate with as many different groups of people as you want in what is basically a Dropbox social network.

You can share files or folders, accompanied by messages, from your computer using the keyboard shortcut, which will automatically launch the Frenzy window. You can also share the URL of the page you are browsing in Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera, Camino, NetNewsWire and Chrome, also using the keyboard shortcut.

Everything you share in any given folder will be visible in the feed of other people with whom this folder is shared. While only the last 25 updates are visible in your feed, the files themselves continue to exist. In future versions of Frenzy, it will be possible to display and view older items in your feed.

If you wish to delete files that are no longer visible in the feed, navigate to your Frenzy folder directly from your feed, by clicking ‘Reveal in Finder,’ on any given item. This will bring you straight to your hidden folder where you can easily delete files that are saved, even if you can’t view them on your feed any longer.

Note: Frenzy is in public beta at the moment, and can be downloaded for free. While the beta will not expire, once the app is launched it will no longer be available for free.

Have you tried out Frenzy? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments.