- Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms at Organic, has left the Omnicom Group shop to join startup file-hosting service Drop.io.
 
Stoller, 37, spent two years at Organic, where he led an innovation group that partnered with startups on new applications and developed programs for Organic clients. In one of the group's recent efforts, it prototyped a mobile application called Placesaver that allows people to save and share interesting places they've been.
 
At Drop.io, Stoller will serve as the company's vp, marketing, in charge of bolstering the 12-person Brooklyn firm's marketing and consumer experience.
 
"I'm a lot more inspired developing applications than building advertising programs," Stoller said. "I truly believe it's about applications over advertising. The future of consumer marketing is building tools people want to use."
 
Stoller joined Organic from Arnell Group, where he was director of communication solutions. He founded Arnell's interactive branding division, Surge Interactive, in 1997. He worked at the shop for 15 years.
 
The idea behind Drop.io is to provide people with a simple way to privately share files, whether videos, photos or documents. The service sets up a unique URL (or drop) that only the user knows. The user can then share the drop with friends and protect it with a password for added privacy.
 
Drop.io is attempting to fill what it sees as a gap in the market of social media. Since social networks and photo-sharing sites are dependent on advertising, their default is to make everything public in order to increase page views and ad inventory, Stoller said.
 
"Lots of social networks and file-sharing networks are very binary," he said. "You're either sharing with everyone or you're not."
 
Drop.io, however, has a "freemium" model like Flickr that provides the basic service for free but charges once users go over a file size limit. It has raised $3.9 million in funding thus far.
 
An Organic rep said the agency is currently looking for Stoller's replacement. Organic is also seeking a new CEO following the departure of Mark Kingdon for the top slot at Linden Lab, the parent company of virtual world Second Life.