Drop.io, Twitter, and Scribd: Praise The Open Web (And Harvard)

Blaise Zerega loves to share.  Today's announcement that Drop.io now works on Twitter is pretty darned cool.  Simply put, sharing information-- files and links-- keeps getting easier as technology continues to collapse the distance and barriers between sites. The net result (pun intended!) is a better flow of information and in this case, a freeflow of information in private.

Drop.io was started last year by Sam Lessin and has raised $3.9 milion in venture money from RRE Ventures and DFJ Gotham. Lessin graduated from Harvard in 2005 and worked briefly at Bain. If you haven't tried the file-sharing service, do. It's very easy and in no time you'll see the appeal of sharing photos and videos without alerting all your friends on Facebook. There's also the potential for online collaboration -- sort of a server in the sky where say, workers spread across time zones can drop files for others to see and review.

I had first noticed Drop.io in June when it partnered with Scribd, a web-publishing upstart where anyone can publish anything for the entire world to see. The best stuff rises to the top in a wisdom of the crowds sort of way, but at the same time, scribd content also enjoys long tail advantages so that an audience can find it. (How's that for overusing jargon?)

Scrib'd was founded by in 2006 by recent grads Trip Adler (Harvard), Jared Friedman (Harvard), and Tikhon Bernstam (Dartmouth).  According to VentureBeat, the firm has raised $3.7 million from Y Combinator, the Kinsey Hills group, Redpoint Ventures, and some angels. The eyebrow raising bit was that they apparently turned down money from Sequoia. Zounds.

So, get out there you early adopter you and publish something on Scribd, and then use Drop.io to share it via Twitter. And when you're done, ask yourself why are all these kids from Harvard starting cool companies?