TapEngage, a San Francisco startup that enables advertisers and publishers to collaborate on tablet-optimized advertising, has been acquired by Dropbox. Terms of the deal have not been released. TapEngage founders Matt Holden and Sean Lynch broke the news on their blog today.
We started TapEngage because we’re really excited about the potential for new mobile technologies to change the face of commerce and computing. As we built TapEngage, we were fortunate enough to collaborate with a wide set of partners doing amazing things in the industry, which further fueled our excitement. However, sometimes you find a company that is making such an incredible impact, you can’t help but want to join forces.
The founders go on to write that they are “still working with the Dropbox team to determine next steps for TapEngage.” Those next steps could vary wildly. The obvious guess is that Matt and Sean will work to improve Dropbox’s tablet presence.
“TapEngage’s strong experience in mobile computing will add to Dropbox’s own efforts in smartphones and tablets,” Dropbox Corporate Development’s Ilya Fushman tells me. “We look forward to the TapEngage team joining Dropbox and bringing their technology and skills.”
However, TapEngage’s current services focus on intense collaboration, which could lead to more interesting applications down the line, like collaborative file editing on Dropbox. Additionally, TapEngage’s advertising experience could pave the way for Dropbox to diversify their monetization schemes and offer larger free storage in exchange for users seeing advertisements.
We’re stoked to welcome Matt and Sean of TapEngage to the #Dropbox team! ow.ly/cjfs4
— Dropbox (@Dropbox) July 17, 2012
Holden tells me he cannot comment on the acquisition.
Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Frustrated by working from multiple computers, Drew was inspired to create a service that would let people bring all their files anywhere, with no need to email around attachments. Drew created a demo of Dropbox and showed it to fellow MIT student Arash Ferdowsi, who dropped out with only one semester left to help make Dropbox a reality. Guiding their decisions was a relentless focus on crafting a...
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