Dropbox acquires cloud-based photo management service Loom

loom dropbox

Following the debut of its new Carousel photo and video management app last week, Dropbox announced today that it has acquired Loom, a cloud-based service for storing your photos. The move should surprise no one, as both companies have very similar goals, but it will affect end users.

Starting today, Loom is no longer accepting new users, and the service will officially shut down on May 16. Current users have until then to act if they wish to save any of their photos/videos by either exporting them to Dropbox, with no interruption in service, or downloading them via a zip file…

Here’s an excerpt from Loom’s announcement:

We know this is a big deal. This decision was made with great care. We have worked hard on our product and feel that our vision aligns perfectly with Dropbox’s vision for Carousel. Dropbox has invested the past seven years focusing on building a secure home for your files. And now with Carousel comes a home for your photos and videos as well. We share the common goal of crafting a high quality product, always putting users’ needs first. After spending some serious time investigating if this was the right move for us, we realized that Dropbox has solved many problems around scaling infrastructure and at Dropbox the Loom team will be able to focus entirely on building great features with a fantastic user experience.

And here’s a video showing the Loom app in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B8KTDqCKx8

Loom users will receive a follow-up email soon with more details and instructions. Those who switch to the new Carousel app will receive the same amount of free space they had on Loom, on Dropbox, forever. And if you are a paid user, you will receive the same quota on Dropbox for free for a year.

There’s no word on how much the acquisition set Dropbox back, but Loom did raise a stout $1.3 million in funding last fall. The service was praised for its ease of use and its ability to sync user photos and videos between multiple devices, with some calling it a ‘better Photo Stream’ for Mac and iOS.

hackpad

Interestingly enough, Loom wasn’t the only company to announce today that it was acquired by Dropbox. Hackpad, a popular cloud-based collaborative documents service used for taking notes and more, also declared this morning that it will be joining the company. Terms of the deal are, again, unknown.