Facebook buys drop.io file sharing service, shuts it down

Facebook's latest acquisition is the cloud-based media sharing service drop.io, which offered a quick and versatile way to upload and share all kinds of files, from pictures to videos to documents. According to a blog post from drop.io, the service will be shutting down December 15th (paid users won't have to pay after November 15th), and deleting all user data. Nothing's being rolled over to Facebook, so current drop.io users have less than two months to download all their files before they're deleted. No new free drops can be created after today.

According to the drop.io blog, Facebook has purchased "most of drop.io's technology and assets," and hired drop.io's Sam Lessin. This seems like a pretty strong signal that Facebook wants to get into the file sharing and storage game in a bigger way, allowing users to casually and privately share media the way drop.io does now. Facebook is strong in the photo sharing department -- in fact, it's the #1 photo sharing site in the world -- but sharing audio, video and docs on FB still leaves a lot to be desired. Facebook's preexisting social graph, combined with drop.io's cloud-based sharing technology, could easily become one of the leading services for sharing files with friends.

Tags: acquisitions, drop.io, facebook, file sharing, FileSharing, sharing