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Facebook Buys a Private File Sharing Service
angry tapir writes "Facebook has purchased most of drop.io, an online content-sharing service, but the social-networking giant sounds more interested in acquiring the company's developers than its technology. Drop.io is a service that lets users create a 'drop' where they can share documents, videos and other digital content. The user can set a time for how long the drop will exist, decide who can view the content, set permissions for who can alter the content and share content in a variety of ways, including on Facebook."
Why the hell they buy external expertise... if there is one firm that is really obnoxious good in sharing, it's facebook. It's their damn business model and there is a market for it apparently. Now excuse me, I need to check on my friends.
What's the problem? Can't Facebook get attract good developers the regular way anymore? Hmm. Maybe all the smart ones know Zuckerberg is a jerk and the company culture is rendered uninhabitable by the swarms of junior-grade developers writing junior-grade PHP, and demand more money than they could negotiate this way.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
FYI, Mark Zuckerberg says that he ALWAYS acquires companies for the people rather than the intellectual property.
Buying a company for its employees seems so much like a recapitulation of the feudal system. I've already felt that America has basically become a feudal state with the federal government playing the role of king, and large corporations playing the role of feudal vassals. But this just throws that into sharp relief.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
any legal issues with the on line file shearing system that facebook can be in for by buying one?
There is alot warez , movies and mp3s on them.
Does this give a hint at what drop.io may help Facebook with, after all the data is deleted?
Share 'anything' is perhaps being taken seriously at Facebook.
Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance -- Mr. Miyagi
Sean Parker was a co-founder of Facebook, and also Napster, so I guess he knows something about legal issues. Napster was sued and ruled out of existence as much as any company can be (I'm sure total value of infringing content on Napster was more than the gross product of the entire universe for all time, using RIAA math) yet its founders came out just fine and went on to do bigger and better things, somehow.
How long would a file sharing service such as this last under COICA?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Permissions? Content that can not only be permanently deleted, but will do itself in with the right settings? What the Hell does Facebook want with people who do things like that?
any legal issues with the on line file shearing system that facebook can be in for by buying one?
There is alot warez , movies and mp3s on them.
The drop.io blog posting should have been included here (not as if people would read it anyway). Emphasis mine:
"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."
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This is a good example of what may happen to drop.io. Friendfeed has a push service for content that got Facebook into all their competitors, and I thought it was bought to be a great Trojan Horse. Wrong. They bought the team and have since done nothing with the site. The Friendfeed team, however, has completely changed the Facebook APIs. They moved off Facebook's pseudo-RESTful protocols, which were a pain to use and a ham-handed way to do authentication, to Oauth, which is easy and offers more granular security for Facebook users. I believe they also came up with the Like idea.
"The user can [...] decide who can view the content"
Of course, Facebook will always be able to view the content.
Seriously the anti-corporate whining here is always a little silly but this takes it to the point of stupid. Serfs? You are kidding right? You realize that any of these people can at any time go get another job. They are just as free as they were at their former company. For that matter, being that FB is in California they could take the money then quit and go form a new company doing the same thing, since California doesn't allow for non-competes.
All it means is that they were recognized as a good team, and this is a good way to keep them as a team and keep them happy. This is particularly true if it was like many small companies where the employees are the owners. Sure FB could have just offered them all jobs but of course that leaves their company out there and a question of how they split their time and so on, presuming they all accept. Or they could offer them a buyout, again which they had to choose to accept, so that FB gets the employees, the tech, everything, and they are all happy.
When a company buys another they get everything, good or bad, that company had. All the employees, the buildings, the technology, the assets, the debt, the contracts, the responsibility. All of it. That is how it works. Usually, employees have reason to be concerned as one of the first things companies tend to do is look for redundant people. Here is sounds like they all get to keep working.
In the US, you can basically walk from any job, any time you want for any reason. You don't have to give two weeks notice, that is a courtesy, not a legal requirement. You can just up and quit, and that is that. Your employer cannot force you to work. Of course they won't pay you if you don't, and they don't have to give you a good reference if you aren't professional about how you quit, but you can just up and leave for any or no reason and that is that.
In that regard, employees have tremendous freedom. You don't owe a company anything, regardless of what they've done for you. You can jump ship as often as you like. Some people do too, you find some people that go through jobs like changing shirts. They stay at one place only until somethign slightly better comes along then bail. Sucks for the company but that is how it goes.
The only case where there can be any kind of direct repercussion is if you signed a contract beforehand. Like say a company offers you $100,000 as a hiring bonus to move and buy a house or something. However in the contract it notes that you have to work for them for a year to get to keep that. If you quit before that, you owe a prorated amount back. Ok then maybe there is a direct consequence.
However not only is such a thing exceedingly rare (when was the last time you heard about it?) but it is also 100% disclosed up front. You'd have to sign for something like that. A company can't say "Here have this bonus," and then later say "Haha! Just kidding, we had our fingers crossed!"
In fact you find normally employment contracts are the other way around. You are talented and they want you, so you sign a contract saying they promise to hire you for 3 years at a given rate. If they decide your services aren't needed fine, but they still have to pay out that contract. My friend has such a thing with a consulting gig. They wanted him to move, and it wasn't worth his while if they wouldn't promise him work past the first contract. So they agreed to one year, 40 hours a week minimum, at his rate. If they decide they don't want him before that is up, fine, but they still have to pay out that contract.
legal issues is one thing... but when i last tried to use drop.io, it required flash to upload anything.
slashdot, where's your normal flash-rage ? :)
Rich
Maybe Facebook should talk to this guy instead. Creating an on-line file drop is so yesterday!
It's gone because the iPhone won't support it
Psst, AC troll. You forgot the goatse link!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Well, this surprising announcement comes a week after everybody else reported that they aquired them just to completely shut them down.
After december, all user data will be deleted.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
... you must share!
...like the first sentence...
hahah, I can't tell if Nancy Pelosi is scared or just had too much botox.
"The user can set a time for how long the drop will exist, decide who can view the content, set permissions for who can alter the content and share content in a variety of ways" But the default for access is world-readable forever. Setting permissions more restrictively requires navigating three intermediate pages and viewing an on-line video ad.
Canning likes this.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Damn, that really blows: drop.io saved me a lot of giant attachment woes from my FTP-challenged clients out there. Any good alternatives? drop.io was great because the interface was simple (literally create a unique drop.io URL and click Upload) and didn't require registration.
body massage!
They are doing what MS was doing for a long time. They bought a competitor, and / or some add in(on) to their product.
This will give them more quality programmers and also any code that is better then their own, will be assimilated.
Good for them.
Seriously the anti-corporate whining here is always a little silly but this takes it to the point of stupid. Serfs? You are kidding right? You realize that any of these people can at any time go get another job. They are just as free as they were at their former company.
First of all, I agree that GP went a bit over the top in comparing this to serfdom. That said, I think that we should always make a difference between "theoretical freedom" and "true freedom".
Theoretically, serfs were usually allowed to buy freedom from their lords (as were slaves in areas where slaves were allowed to own personal property). In practice, they usually wouldn't have been able to do it because they just couldn't earn enough money. So I think that comparison to feudalism is fine in some cases: If an employee has no real choice about where they can work (there is very poor chance that they could find another job) and there isn't strong enough social security, in reality their freedom is "Do everything the boss says for whatever wage he feels like offering, or starve to death". In such a case, the true freedom of a person is no better than that of a slave who doesn't have money to buy his freedom. One could always make some philosophical points about why theoretical freedoms are more important than practical freedoms... I simply disagree with such points.
That is the reasoning behind social security (that you can't be considered free if you don't have any practical freedom... So you need to be able to say "No" to work if it seems more like slavery than a job) and I just felt important to note it here. That the "Can any time just quit" might not always hold true when it comes to reality.... Though usually software developers aren't in such a poor situation and have savings or can get loans or something.
Facebook is expanding!
Yes, but does my cum taste like salty milk? Cause Kylie said it did....
Your penis only exists digitally? I feel sorry for you.