Facebook Acquires Simple File-sharing Service Drop.io

Simple file-sharing service Drop.io has been acquired by Facebook.

“Today, we’re proud to announce that we’ve struck a deal withFacebook,” the company said in an announcement on its blog. “What this means is that Facebook has bought most of drop.io’s technology and assets, and Sam Lessin is moving to Facebook.”

Drop.io was led by Sam Lessin, a former consultant for Bain & Company. He attended Harvard University (2001-2005) and even knew Mark Zuckerberg during the early days of Facebook. Now he will take up a new role at the world’s largest social network.

As a result of the acquisition, drop.io will be shutting down; paid accounts will be discontinued on December 15. This is yet another talent acquisition for Facebook; the data on drop.io will be deleted by the end of the year.

We’ve included drop.io’s full announcement below. Let us know what you think of the acquisition in the comments:

“Here at drop.io, we’ve had a great three years helping people privately share pictures, video, audio, documents, andmore. It’s been a thrill to watch the first, thousandth, millionth, and ten-millionth drop be created.

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.

Please download your information before Dec. 15 – we plan to delete it after that time. No user data or content will be transferred to Facebook, and we’ll send out e-mails to everyone to remind them about the service closing.

Other drop.io services like Presslift, our Yahoo! Mail Application, and our APIs will stay online for a longer period before the company winds down. We’ll announce more details on that soon. However, starting immediately, we’ll no longer be selling new premium accounts for those services.

To our loyal users and fans, we cannotthank you enough for your patronage, support, and feedback (good and bad) over the years.

Warmest regards, The drop.io Team”