9 posts and columns on Drop.io

With Burn Note, Self-Destructing Emails Vanish After They’ve Been Read

in News on January 31 at 10:03 am PT

A new email service promises to expunge any trace of email exchanges after a note has been read. But, in the age of digital data, is anything ever really erased?
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Finding the Scale of the Rest of the World Lacking, Early Designer Rejoins Facebook

in Social on February 14, 2011 at 5:00 am PT

Aaron Sittig, who left Facebook after being the company’s lead designer for five years, is now back at the mother ship, having rejoined in January with the title “product architect.”

With 500-Shareholder Concerns Gone, Will Facebook Make Big Acquisitions?

in Social on January 7, 2011 at 1:14 pm PT

Now that Facebook is giving itself permission to have 500 or more shareholders, given it expects to go public next year, the company’s acquisitions team may get the go-ahead in 2011 to pursue larger and more complicated deals.

Facebook Acqhirees Make a Quick Mark on Its Products

in Social on November 23, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

Facebook has a well-defined M&A strategy of bringing in talent from young, small companies and shutting down their products. But there’s also a pattern emerging for what happens to that talent. Acqhired CEOs hold prominent roles on Facebook’s product team; nearly every recent Facebook product launch seems to have been introduced by an acqhired employee.

News Byte

One More New York Acqhire for Facebook: Zenbe

in Media on November 16, 2010 at 9:11 am PT

If you’re a big Internet company in a hurry, you can go out and hire engineers one by one. Or you can just buy their start-up. That’s one of Facebook’s favorite tactics, and it did it again earlier this year by buying Zenbe, a small email company that Facebook used to build its “don’t call it email” platform, Caroline McCarthy reports. Zenbe says the deal closed “a few months ago”; I’m reasonably sure it was done last spring. If you’re counting, that’s the third New York-based start-up Facebook has picked up for talent reasons, following Hot Potato and Drop.io.

Mark Zuckerberg Really, Really Wanted to Work With Sam Lessin

in Media on November 2, 2010 at 10:19 am PT

Facebook paid around $20 million for Drop.io, just so it could shut down the service and hire founder Sam Lessin–a deal that’s not terribly unusual. What is unusual: Lessin’s old Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg funded the purchase with precious Facebook shares.

Hollywood’s How-To Guide to Web Piracy

in Media on September 30, 2009 at 12:05 pm PT

Want to learn how to steal your favorite movie or TV show? A 10-minute video starring a Paramount executive offers detailed instructions.
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