Dropbox acquires used-item selling service Sold
I have to admit that I have never heard of Sold before today, and that I have not used the company's apps or service to sell items that I own.
The basic idea behind Sold was to make the selling process as easy as possible for the seller.
If you want to sell an item on eBay or Amazon marketplace for example, you have to do quite a few things to get started: write a title and description, make photos, categorize it, set a price for it and also handle the shipping once the item gets sold.
With Sold, all you had to do was photograph the item, add a title and description, and let the service handle the rest for you. It would use a pricing calculator to determine the best price, and also handle shipping and payment for you.
Sold acted as a broker finding buyers for products that users uploaded to the service. What made the service special was the pricing algorithm that predicted prices for items based on your photos and description, and database information.
Dropbox acquires Sold
Sold announced today that its service has been acquired by Dropbox. Dropbox runs one of the most popular file synchronization and cloud hosting services on today's Internet, and it has been expanding its service in the past year by acquiring companies left and right.
In the past 12 months, Dropbox acquired companies -- and their technologies -- such as Mailbox, Audiogalaxy or Snapjoy in an effort to not only add new functionality to the company's core product, but also as a way to hire talent.
Not every service has found its way into Dropbox yet. The service does not support email yet for instance, and there is only basic audio and video streaming built into Dropbox, but it is very likely that these features will be added to the service at one point in time.
And now it is Sold. It is not clear how the service fits into the expansion plans of Dropbox, but there are synergies. Dropbox could be used to store the photos and information of items that users want to sell, while the technology that powered Sold is doing its workings in the background.
Will Sold be integrated into Dropbox, or was the acquisition more of a talent grab? It is too early to tell, but there is no mentioning in the announcement if development on Sold will continue, or if the makers of the service will work on other services on products now that they are part of the Dropbox family.
It is however likely that the acquisition was a talent grab more than it was out of interest to integrate the product into Dropbox.
Advertisement
Very good Dropbox!. Another awesome startup :)
I guess there wasn’t a press release about Sold!s(?) data breach last week. it seems odd to me they would shut down entirely and jump ship like this. It makes me question the security of dropbox now.
http://security.mongohq.com/notice#security-breach
Here’s the full notice they sent to current accounts,
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e0dc8df41078fe6bae5f47854&id=bf0fadf782&e=ae42c78898
Whatever data breach SOLD experienced will, I’ll bet dollars to donuts, not be brought over to Dropbox. Fear not.
__________________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Dropbox is dead, a has-been. Too stingy with their measly 2GB start amount and measly 250MB referral bonus. They were the first, but have now stagnated to ‘worst’.
I’ve switched to Copy from barracuda. They use AE 256 encryption during transfer and while at rest in their servers – check out details at copy.com
If you use a referral link like mine (https://copy.com?r=Ca33FM) you get 5GB bonus for a total of 20GB free for life, plus 5GB referral bonus if you refer others. Has the basic functions such as desktop/mobile apps, cameraphone uploads, etc. IMO, it’s no contest – Dropbox, man up and give at least a half-decent free plan, or go home.