Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for implementing globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) in a multi-user network-based content management environment, from the perspective of a server creating a GUID for a content item, and serving requests based on the GUID. A content management system can identify a content item at a location within the data storage. Each user of the content management system can be associated with a respective user account having an amount of storage space within the storage environment. The content management system can model a user account as a collection of content item objects and globally unique identifiers that are independent of a directory-based hierarchy of content items.