On Friday news broke that Facebook was acquiring the online file sharing company, Drop.io, and that Sam Lessin, the company’s founder, would be joining the team. The announcement was made on the company’s blog. As part of the deal, Facebook is shutting down the Drop.io service.
So why is Facebook shutting down the service completely? While one could speculate that some of the file sharing technology will eventually be integrated into Facebook, the most likely reason is that Facebook doesn’t want to be responsible for managing another code base. The announcement from Drop.io stated the following:
Today, we’re proud to announce that we’ve struck a deal with Facebook. What this means is that Facebook has bought most of drop.io’s technology and assets, and Sam Lessin is moving to Facebook.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be winding down the drop.io service. As of this week, people will no longer be able to create new free drops, but you’ll be able to download content from existing drops until Dec. 15. Paid user accounts will still be available through Dec. 15 and paid users will be able to continue using the service normally. After Dec. 15, paid accounts will be discontinued as well.
How many other employees were employed by the company we aren’t quite sure, however it’s clear that Sam Lessin was the target in this acquisition. This acquisition also leads to some speculation about the rationale. Was Drop.io acquired as a favor between Mark Zuckerberg and Lessin? Or was Facebook purchased because Facebook has intentions of integrating their own file sharing service? While the company has suggested that this was a talent acquisition, that alone would seem like an unlikely reason.
Given that Facebook probably paid somewhere in the range of $10 million for the company, we can only guess that Mark Zuckerberg was helping out a friend (Lessin) while simultaneously bringing him on board for an extended period of time, as he’ll be a valuable asset for the company. No matter the rationale, it’s definitely great news for drop.io.
Source: All Facebook
Monday, November 1, 2010